WEBVTT - Part One: How Jeffrey Epstein Helped Build the Modern World

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<v Speaker 1>Also media.

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<v Speaker 2>What Jeffrey my Epstein's This is Behind the Bastards, a

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<v Speaker 2>podcast about the very worst people in all of history.

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<v Speaker 3>And as you may have guessed.

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<v Speaker 2>From my completely original introduction that I definitely haven't done before,

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<v Speaker 2>we are back talking about Jepstein. Jeffrey Epstein, the big

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<v Speaker 2>ezy what because he's not called by anyone. Yes, I

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<v Speaker 2>love that we're getting into the Epstein Files. That's that's

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<v Speaker 2>what these episodes are going to be. With my good

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<v Speaker 2>friend and colleague Andrew T. Yeah, are you a fan

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<v Speaker 2>of Jeffrey Epstein?

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<v Speaker 3>How do you feel about the guy?

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<v Speaker 4>I mean, uh, he's he's in a photo with he

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<v Speaker 4>is so many people. Just he's on the ground with

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<v Speaker 4>so many of my faves, so right, right, judge a

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<v Speaker 4>man by his friends. I mean, he's got great friends,

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<v Speaker 4>you know, obviously, like half the New York Times is

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<v Speaker 4>his buddy. You know, I got to come clean up

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<v Speaker 4>at the top. I show up many times in the

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<v Speaker 4>Epstein Files. If you search for Robert Evans, you will

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<v Speaker 4>find my name in there a lot. You know, I

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<v Speaker 4>have to assume that that I was up to up

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<v Speaker 4>to no good there, and I apologize, you know, after

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<v Speaker 4>producing the godfather. A lot of stuff got to my head,

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<v Speaker 4>you know. I think I just kind of let fame

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<v Speaker 4>and money drive me a little crazy. You know. That's

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<v Speaker 4>the great thing about you, Robert, is somehow you're going

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<v Speaker 4>to be known as Robert Evans Comma, somehow the lesser scumbag. Yeah, somehow,

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<v Speaker 4>the less evil Robert Evans. Yeah, somehow, the Robert Evans

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<v Speaker 4>who's done the last less drugs too. Yeah. I think

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<v Speaker 4>we can't find me in.

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<v Speaker 1>The Epstein files, and you won't find me saying anything

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<v Speaker 1>nice about the guy.

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<v Speaker 2>So no, this is not about that. We're certainly not

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<v Speaker 2>saying anything nice about the guy. And no, the problem is,

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<v Speaker 2>obviously we've got a shitload more Epstein files. Right right

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<v Speaker 2>at the top, there were a bunch released in twenty

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<v Speaker 2>twenty five, and then right at the top of twenty

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<v Speaker 2>twenty six, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that even

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<v Speaker 2>more were going.

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<v Speaker 3>To be released.

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<v Speaker 2>Specifically, he revealed that the Justice Department was releasing three

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<v Speaker 2>million new pages of files related to the Epstein case.

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<v Speaker 2>Such a vast quantity of information can't be digested in

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<v Speaker 2>short order, and we haven't discovered all of the secrets

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<v Speaker 2>in this tranch of files or in the last the

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<v Speaker 2>stuff that came out last year. People are still picking

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<v Speaker 2>stuff out right, which is why, because it's going to

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<v Speaker 2>take so much time to find everything that's noteworthy inside

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<v Speaker 2>these files. Todd Blanche sought to set expectations prior to

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<v Speaker 2>the file dump, so he insisted to the world that

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<v Speaker 2>the only hang up and getting these files out. The

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<v Speaker 2>only thing that had delayed them past the amount of

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<v Speaker 2>time they were legally supposed to be put up in

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<v Speaker 2>was that the Justice Department had to scan them to

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<v Speaker 2>see if Epstein had said anything that criminally implicated President Trump.

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<v Speaker 2>Older files certainly had things that could be seen as

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<v Speaker 2>implicating Trump. Releases in twenty twenty five included a twenty

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<v Speaker 2>twenty email from a federal prosecutor stating Trump had been

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<v Speaker 2>a passenger on the Lolita Express a minimum of eight

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<v Speaker 2>times between nineteen ninety three and nineteen ninety six. On

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<v Speaker 2>one trip, the three listed passengers were Trump, Epstein, and

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<v Speaker 2>a twenty year old female name redacted. So like he

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<v Speaker 2>is certainly implicated in a lot. You've seen probably the

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<v Speaker 2>birthday letter in the shape of a naked woman signed

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<v Speaker 2>by Trump for Epstein, right, you've probably seen. There's a

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<v Speaker 2>photo of Epstein and a young girl with a giant

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<v Speaker 2>check from Donald Trump. You've certainly heard the rumors that

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<v Speaker 2>he and Bill Clinton may have engaged in some oral

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<v Speaker 2>sex together. That was almost certainly Jeffrey Epstein joking around

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<v Speaker 2>rather than something that literally happened. But a lot of

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<v Speaker 2>crazy shit is in these files that literally happened. And

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<v Speaker 2>probably the single worst piece of data I have seen

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<v Speaker 2>from an implicating the president point of view is this

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<v Speaker 2>paragraph from an FBI interview with a victim of Epstein's.

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<v Speaker 2>I'll read it in a second, but it's particularly funny

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<v Speaker 2>when you pair it with this statement from Todd Blanch.

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<v Speaker 2>So here's Todd Blanche first. In none of these communications,

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<v Speaker 2>even when doing his best disparage President Trump, did Epstein

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<v Speaker 2>suggest President Trump had done anything criminal or had any

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<v Speaker 2>inappropriate contact with any of his victims. Now, oh, going

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<v Speaker 2>to read to you a quote from the FBI. During

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<v Speaker 2>one of Jane Doe's encounters with Epstein, he took her

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<v Speaker 2>to mar A Lago, where he introduced her to its owner,

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<v Speaker 2>Donald J.

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<v Speaker 3>Trump.

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<v Speaker 2>Introducing fourteen year old dough to Donald J. Trump, Epstein

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<v Speaker 2>elbowed Trump playfully, asking him referring to Doe, this is

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<v Speaker 2>a good one, right, Trump smiled and nodded an agreement.

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<v Speaker 2>They both chuckled, and Doe felt uncomfortable, but at the

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<v Speaker 2>time was too young to understand why. Yeah, that's hideous. Ew,

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<v Speaker 2>that's just disgusting.

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<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna say you a lot on these episodes.

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<v Speaker 2>But Ew.

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<v Speaker 4>The thing that I don't understand is, like, what did

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<v Speaker 4>Trump think was going to happen when these came out?

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<v Speaker 2>Like?

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<v Speaker 4>Was he just riffing? Did he think that someone was

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<v Speaker 4>actually going to go and falsify and redact shit? I

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<v Speaker 4>think he.

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<v Speaker 2>Thought, first off, I can just brute force this not

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<v Speaker 2>getting released. It hadn't been earlier. Yeah, And I'm sure

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<v Speaker 2>when it became inevident, when it became clear that like

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<v Speaker 2>they literally could not politically afford not to release these,

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<v Speaker 2>like not even just the legal stuff, Like their base

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<v Speaker 2>would have flipped out if they hadn't released this stuff

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<v Speaker 2>because of how central the Epstein files are to the

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<v Speaker 2>conspiratorial right too. I think at that point he just

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<v Speaker 2>probably and probably was reassured by his people. Look, man,

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<v Speaker 2>you literally could shoot a guy in Central Park and

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<v Speaker 2>your bass will stand behind you.

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<v Speaker 3>You'll be okay.

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<v Speaker 2>And maybe he will, you know, I guess it's definitely

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<v Speaker 2>hurting him, but not that we're.

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<v Speaker 4>In the midst we're in the midst of seeing. But

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<v Speaker 4>it is like I'm just like, we'll see you knew

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<v Speaker 4>what was going to be a passing, right, Like like

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<v Speaker 4>what like why would you stoke this? Because because that's

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<v Speaker 4>the thing is he did continue to stoke this flyer

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<v Speaker 4>and it's like he sure did because.

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<v Speaker 2>He'd be able to have more control. They they it's

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<v Speaker 2>also very sloppy. They very sloppily tried. Like one person

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<v Speaker 2>that I saw on Blue Sky pointed out there's a

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<v Speaker 2>lot of don'ts that are censored in the files, like

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<v Speaker 2>the word don't. And the only reason for that is

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<v Speaker 2>because like someone just went through and did like automatically

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<v Speaker 2>any use of like dawn t like they just starting

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<v Speaker 2>right Like there's stuff like there's a lot of really

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<v Speaker 2>like lazy attempts to and they've they've uploaded some stuff

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<v Speaker 2>and then pulled it back down. There's all sorts of

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<v Speaker 2>stuff like that, right I I think in terms of

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<v Speaker 2>the stuff that is most powerful to me, right it

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<v Speaker 2>is that the quote I just read you in part

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<v Speaker 2>if you've seen there's footage, Sophie'll play it right now.

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<v Speaker 2>There's some NBC archival footage of a nineteen ninety two

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<v Speaker 2>party where Trump and Epstein hung out together. There's a

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<v Speaker 2>decent chance you've seen it online, and it's just the two.

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<v Speaker 2>You can't even hear what they're saying, really, but the

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<v Speaker 2>two are like pointing it and talking about women and

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<v Speaker 2>like laughing to each other. And the body language in

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<v Speaker 2>that scene, which which should be playing right now, if

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<v Speaker 2>you read back over that statement with like Epstein elbowing

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<v Speaker 2>Trump and being like this is a good one, right,

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<v Speaker 2>and Trump smiled and nodding and they both laughing, it's

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<v Speaker 2>the same, Like you can you can see a moment

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<v Speaker 2>like that between them in this footage. Like that's part

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<v Speaker 2>of why I believe this is literally true, Like is

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<v Speaker 2>because we have other evidence of them hanging out together

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<v Speaker 2>that sounds exactly like it.

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<v Speaker 4>It's doing shit like that. Well, because it's also just

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<v Speaker 4>like it's just a pedophile frat house, right right. It's

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<v Speaker 4>just like when you like kind of get the tenor

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<v Speaker 4>of it, none of it's like surprising. Really you're like, yeah,

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<v Speaker 4>of course these people act like this. I guess, like

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<v Speaker 4>the the amount of emails they sent is a little surprising. Frankly.

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<v Speaker 2>You get at also, by the way, why I have

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<v Speaker 2>focused the episodes the way I focused them, because as

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<v Speaker 2>you've noted, there's a ton of I mean, there's there's

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<v Speaker 2>there's so much here, right for one thing like that,

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<v Speaker 2>you could I could do episodes all year on this

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<v Speaker 2>and not run out of content. There's so much fucking

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<v Speaker 2>shit in here, but a lot of it is just okay. Yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>the pedophiles told another gross pedophile joke. He and his

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<v Speaker 2>pedophile friends continue to be nasty with each other. That's

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<v Speaker 2>not surprising. What's really surprising to me is the number

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<v Speaker 2>of things that Epstein has been revealed to have been

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<v Speaker 2>central to that created the modern world everywhere. Yeah, I

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<v Speaker 2>made a post earlier that was a little inaccurate. The

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<v Speaker 2>Jeffrey Epstein Jeffrey Epstein was the first first domino for

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<v Speaker 2>fucking uh like cryptocurrency for like for like the modern

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<v Speaker 2>like the cryptocurrency in like its modern attached to the

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<v Speaker 2>far right sense.

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<v Speaker 4>Uh.

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<v Speaker 2>He was like a starting domino for gamer game is

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<v Speaker 2>starting domino for the fucking two thousand and eight financial crash. Like,

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<v Speaker 2>there's all sorts of shit and he's he's also deeply

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<v Speaker 2>implicated in like the growth and birth of right wing media,

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<v Speaker 2>right including sharing a lot of like fucking really kind

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<v Speaker 2>of fringe at the time far right like podcasts and

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<v Speaker 2>articles with his with his friends, like he was he

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<v Speaker 2>helped create the modern far right, and he helped ruin

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<v Speaker 2>the Internet in a lot of ways. And there's a

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<v Speaker 2>good Garbage Day column on that. But we're going to

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<v Speaker 2>be focusing on how Epstein built the modern world, or

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<v Speaker 2>helped to build the modern world, like his influence on

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<v Speaker 2>particularly development of the far right, and like uh cryptocurrency

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<v Speaker 2>and the far like the online media ecosystem that has

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<v Speaker 2>like fed into the far right, particularly four Chan. That's

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<v Speaker 2>what these episodes are about. It's like how Jeffrey Epstein

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<v Speaker 2>built the worst parts of the modern world because he

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<v Speaker 2>was shut he was even more influential than we knew.

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<v Speaker 2>There's been a lot that that surprised me in these files,

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<v Speaker 2>like stuff that I just would not have guessed was

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<v Speaker 2>the case.

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<v Speaker 4>Do you think though, there's an element of just sort

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<v Speaker 4>of like right place, right time, Like he's talking about

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<v Speaker 4>these things in a way that is like but like

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<v Speaker 4>kind of like, yes, we're looking at the private communications

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<v Speaker 4>of billionaires and right far right, and I mean, I'm

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<v Speaker 4>just like, I'm like, there's probably a world where it's

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<v Speaker 4>all like this. Maybe throughout history, like.

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<v Speaker 2>Reagan's letters, I think that you were. Throughout history there

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<v Speaker 2>have always been like this has always been how a

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<v Speaker 2>lot of things have gotten done. A lot of the

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<v Speaker 2>sausage is made like politically, like like this is how

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<v Speaker 2>in every society you have groups of elites who are

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<v Speaker 2>all creepy friends and are all probably having creepy sex,

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<v Speaker 2>often with underage people, and you know, through their like

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<v Speaker 2>petty bigotries and rivalries and whatnot, making policy that affects

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<v Speaker 2>millions and millions of lives. Right, That's that's always been

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<v Speaker 2>the case. And it you know, when I said that

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<v Speaker 2>Jeffrey was the first Domino, that's not entirely accurate for

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<v Speaker 2>any of those things, except maybe for gamer Gate. But

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<v Speaker 2>he was like an early Domino in all of these things.

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<v Speaker 2>And so yeah, it's one of these like you have

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<v Speaker 2>to you have to be I don't want to frame

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<v Speaker 2>it as like Epstein started any of these things, or

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<v Speaker 2>was the only idea he was the guy who created

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<v Speaker 2>micro transactions in video games.

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<v Speaker 3>That's not really accurate.

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<v Speaker 2>But he heavily influenced the development of micro transactions in

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<v Speaker 2>video games because he was talking up the idea and

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<v Speaker 2>pushing it to a lot of influential friends in the industry.

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<v Speaker 2>And that's generally how stuff worked with Epstein, right, I mean,

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<v Speaker 2>with the exception of the financial crash, stuff is is

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<v Speaker 2>a little wonk ear.

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<v Speaker 1>It's interesting because like when you list those things that

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<v Speaker 1>my my like, without knowing that this was the topic,

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<v Speaker 1>I instantly think like Steve Bannon as well.

0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:22.320
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, he was close with Bannon as talking.

0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:27.360
<v Speaker 1>About Yeah, and so it's just like motherfucker was everywhere.

0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:32.559
<v Speaker 4>Yeah. Just like the question to me is like, is

0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:36.560
<v Speaker 4>the causality, like do just being a pedophile make you

0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:38.520
<v Speaker 4>more of a make turn you into a right wing

0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:40.400
<v Speaker 4>freak or just being a right wing freak turn you

0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:41.199
<v Speaker 4>into a pedophile?

0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:44.760
<v Speaker 2>Well, this is and we'll talk about it. I kind

0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:47.319
<v Speaker 2>of what happened what.

0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:48.800
<v Speaker 1>I said, chicken or the egg?

0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:55.840
<v Speaker 2>Sorry, okay, Yeah, I kind of think when it comes

0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:59.559
<v Speaker 2>to answering that question, I think Epstein, like Trump, like

0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:02.320
<v Speaker 2>a lot of these guys, was socially someone that you

0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:04.720
<v Speaker 2>would have pegged as more of like a liberal or

0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:06.160
<v Speaker 2>progressive based on the causes.

0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:07.240
<v Speaker 3>He's supporting the people he.

0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:09.880
<v Speaker 2>Hung out with most of his life, but his primarily

0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:12.160
<v Speaker 2>guy who's interested in his own personal power and wealth.

0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:15.000
<v Speaker 2>And a lot of his right word turn came after

0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:18.559
<v Speaker 2>his conviction and his jail sentence in like two thousand

0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:20.880
<v Speaker 2>and eight, two thousand and nine, and after that he's

0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:24.679
<v Speaker 2>increasingly angry and increasingly reactionary. And that's a lot of

0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:26.920
<v Speaker 2>these guys get on the right. He's a big cancel

0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:29.840
<v Speaker 2>culture guy. He's freaked out by me too, right, So

0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:32.720
<v Speaker 2>that's a big factor in why he goes far right.

0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:36.160
<v Speaker 2>I don't think him being a pedophile has much ideologically

0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:41.000
<v Speaker 2>other than unfortunately, as we've seen, a lot of powerful

0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:44.079
<v Speaker 2>men want to have sex with fifteen and sixteen year

0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:47.320
<v Speaker 2>old girls, right, And that's not a left or a

0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:49.960
<v Speaker 2>right wing thing, you know, it's not even just a

0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:54.079
<v Speaker 2>politics thing. Fucking priests and cops and whatnot, all like

0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:58.680
<v Speaker 2>r you know, it is all powerful people or less kids,

0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:01.760
<v Speaker 2>you know sometimes but in part because if you want

0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:05.160
<v Speaker 2>to molest kids, getting into a position of power makes

0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:06.200
<v Speaker 2>it a lot easier to do that.

0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:06.679
<v Speaker 3>Way.

0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:10.120
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, yeah, it's one of the incidental like, yeah, if

0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:12.800
<v Speaker 4>that's your goal, power is a good way to achieve it.

0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:16.559
<v Speaker 4>Power also achieves other things. But yeah, right, that's probably

0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:17.920
<v Speaker 4>the logical funnel.

0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:18.880
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:23.120
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and you know when it comes to because we'll

0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:25.600
<v Speaker 2>be talking a little bit about Trump in these episodes,

0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:29.800
<v Speaker 2>but he's not. It's more how Epstein helped like build

0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:34.240
<v Speaker 2>and prepare like the media ecosystem and the cultural like

0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:39.479
<v Speaker 2>ideological environment to make Trump's presidency possible. Like his contribution

0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:42.520
<v Speaker 2>to that is more interesting to me in these episodes

0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:45.800
<v Speaker 2>than like what Trump was involved in with Epstein, which

0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:48.560
<v Speaker 2>is why I kind of started the episode by pointing

0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:50.280
<v Speaker 2>that out. But I'm not gonna We're not gonna be

0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:53.040
<v Speaker 2>covering that heavily because you can find that in a

0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:56.360
<v Speaker 2>bunch of places, and anyone who's not an idiot knows

0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:59.360
<v Speaker 2>that Donald Trump was deeply involved in Epstein. And if

0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:03.240
<v Speaker 2>he didn't have underage girls Epstein was trafficking, then he

0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:06.680
<v Speaker 2>had sex with adults that Epstein was illegally trafficking, right,

0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:09.800
<v Speaker 2>Like like I don't know who he had sex with,

0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:15.280
<v Speaker 2>but it wasn't good, right. Yeah, So yeah, these episodes

0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:17.680
<v Speaker 2>are going to be about what we've learned about Jeffrey

0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:21.200
<v Speaker 2>Epstein and everyone else, because the horrifying truth hidden at

0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:24.120
<v Speaker 2>the center of the revealed Epstein files is that Jeffrey

0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:26.600
<v Speaker 2>wasn't just a pedophile financier who knew the secrets of

0:15:26.640 --> 0:15:29.080
<v Speaker 2>the elite. He was a player himself, and he actively

0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:31.400
<v Speaker 2>used his influence in clout and money to shift the

0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:35.000
<v Speaker 2>world in new directions. And despite his public persona as

0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:37.720
<v Speaker 2>a philanthropist who hung out with scientists and philosophers and

0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:39.880
<v Speaker 2>a lot of left coded kinds of people, he spent

0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:42.320
<v Speaker 2>the last decade of his life building support for a

0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:45.840
<v Speaker 2>global right wing power grab with people like Peter Teel

0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:49.200
<v Speaker 2>and Steve Bannon. And this power grab succeeded. It left

0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:52.200
<v Speaker 2>him behind, but he lived to see it come to fruition,

0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:54.560
<v Speaker 2>which you can tell was very frustrating to him that

0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:59.520
<v Speaker 2>like I helped, I helped make this all possible, and

0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:02.000
<v Speaker 2>yet I'm I'm not going to benefit from the impunity

0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:06.920
<v Speaker 2>that I can see going to other people. So I

0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:08.560
<v Speaker 2>went back and forth as to where we were going

0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:12.000
<v Speaker 2>to start with these episodes. Which of the reveals do

0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:14.320
<v Speaker 2>we begin with? Because there's so many players, so many

0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:18.080
<v Speaker 2>different people who were important and implicated with Epstein, that

0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:21.520
<v Speaker 2>it's impossible to not leave some stuff out. But I

0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:23.160
<v Speaker 2>think The story I want to tell this week is

0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:25.000
<v Speaker 2>going to flow best if I start with the tale

0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:28.040
<v Speaker 2>of a little feller named Brock Pierce. Have you heard

0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:28.440
<v Speaker 2>of Brock?

0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:30.440
<v Speaker 3>No?

0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:34.440
<v Speaker 4>No, no, okay, good good God, You're gonna You're gonna

0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:35.640
<v Speaker 4>recognize him in a second here.

0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:38.680
<v Speaker 1>Unfortunately, you really are you really really?

0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:44.480
<v Speaker 2>Born November fourteenth, nineteen eighty, Brock Jeffrey Pierce another Jeffrey

0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.800
<v Speaker 2>came into this world in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the city even

0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:49.840
<v Speaker 2>now in the crosshairs of a fascist movement that at

0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:53.800
<v Speaker 2>least partly exists through the consequences of Brock's actions. There

0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:56.360
<v Speaker 2>was little sign of this in his early life. However,

0:16:56.560 --> 0:16:58.600
<v Speaker 2>his parents seem to want him to have a career

0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:01.200
<v Speaker 2>in Hollywood. It's a clear to me how much they

0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:03.720
<v Speaker 2>pushed their son and how much he genuinely wanted that

0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:07.600
<v Speaker 2>for himself. Pierce has described himself as a simple hockey

0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:11.480
<v Speaker 2>loving boy from Minnesota. When at age three, he started

0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:15.480
<v Speaker 2>acting in commercials. This wound up building to his big shot,

0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:18.480
<v Speaker 2>a supporting role in the first Mighty Ducks movie.

0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:19.880
<v Speaker 3>So he was in The.

0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:23.960
<v Speaker 2>Mighty Ducks, The Stars the Mighty Ducks. Yeah, yeah, you

0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:26.920
<v Speaker 2>like those movies As a kid, I seemed I think

0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:27.520
<v Speaker 2>I did.

0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:28.880
<v Speaker 4>I think so right.

0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:32.640
<v Speaker 2>The second one taught me the difference between Iceland and Greenland.

0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:37.280
<v Speaker 4>You know, uh, you know, I was probably nitpicking hockey

0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:40.879
<v Speaker 4>formations a little bit. The Flying V is not so good.

0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:43.360
<v Speaker 4>I guess sure.

0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:45.280
<v Speaker 2>I don't know much about hockey other than I like

0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:48.439
<v Speaker 2>fist fights. If you're too young to have seen the

0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:50.800
<v Speaker 2>Mighty Ducks movies and you don't understand what Andrew and

0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:53.360
<v Speaker 2>I are talking about, they're a series. I think there's

0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:55.359
<v Speaker 2>a trilogy, ultimately.

0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:58.360
<v Speaker 4>Probably straight to DVD. There's a much who.

0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:01.639
<v Speaker 2>Knows how many there are, right, Yeah, there's there's several

0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:03.680
<v Speaker 2>of these movies, and they're all kind of about a

0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:06.159
<v Speaker 2>pee wee hockey team from the Twin Cities area that

0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:09.359
<v Speaker 2>isn't very good, right, It's a bad team. And then

0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:13.480
<v Speaker 2>an attorney named no Ship Gordon Bombay gets sentenced to

0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:17.200
<v Speaker 2>community service and winds up coaching them, and YadA, YadA, YadA.

0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:19.679
<v Speaker 2>You've seen one underdog sports team movie. You've seen them all, right,

0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:21.800
<v Speaker 2>you know where this basically goes, right, It's kind of

0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:24.800
<v Speaker 2>a it's this is essentially it's kind of a hockey

0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:28.440
<v Speaker 2>ripoff of Bad News Bears, a little bit right. Oh yeah,

0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:31.560
<v Speaker 2>you know, without without the the charisma of the raw,

0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:33.920
<v Speaker 2>unbridled charisma of Walter Mathow.

0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:35.960
<v Speaker 3>God but a champion.

0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:41.520
<v Speaker 4>I mean it's it's Emelio Estevez, I think, right. And

0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:45.000
<v Speaker 4>also yeah, in Bombay, if I recall, he's doing what

0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:49.240
<v Speaker 4>he got. He got busted for trunk driving.

0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:51.919
<v Speaker 2>Right right, right right, yeah, Yeah, he's gorgon trouble and

0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:52.600
<v Speaker 2>he has to do it.

0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:54.360
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, couldn't Bombay Chin.

0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:59.720
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So the Mighty Ducks premise was strong enough to

0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:02.480
<v Speaker 2>Susay in a trilogy which no critics consider to be

0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:05.200
<v Speaker 2>basically the Hockey children's hockey equivalent to the Lord of

0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:08.800
<v Speaker 2>the Rings. Brock's career spanned thirteen years as an actor,

0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:12.399
<v Speaker 2>and it culminated in the nineteen ninety six film First Kid,

0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:16.000
<v Speaker 2>where Pierce played the President's son. During the movie's release,

0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:17.800
<v Speaker 2>he got to visit the White House and even sit

0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:20.919
<v Speaker 2>in President Clinton's chair in the Oval Office. Here's a

0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:24.119
<v Speaker 2>photo with him and comedy legend Sindbad. Look at that

0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:26.360
<v Speaker 2>pet them together. Look at that?

0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:28.200
<v Speaker 4>Honestly, pretty sick.

0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:30.480
<v Speaker 2>Pretty cool, Pretty cool as a kid to get to

0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:33.200
<v Speaker 2>take photos in the Oval Office with fucking Sinbad.

0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:36.200
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I like that color blue carpet.

0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:38.359
<v Speaker 3>It's a nice blue carpet. Yeah.

0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:40.720
<v Speaker 2>If you need a description of this photo, I would

0:19:40.760 --> 0:19:43.320
<v Speaker 2>say Brock looked sort of like the Sam's Club brand

0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:46.560
<v Speaker 2>Macaulay Culkin. And I don't know how to describe Simbad

0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:48.600
<v Speaker 2>to you. That would be like explaining the sun to

0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:53.040
<v Speaker 2>an earthworm, right. Anyway, Brock was fourteen at the time

0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:56.359
<v Speaker 2>of this visit, and per an AOL interview by Sean Newman,

0:19:56.640 --> 0:19:59.840
<v Speaker 2>he was quote thinking about leaving acting, determined to carve

0:19:59.880 --> 0:20:02.840
<v Speaker 2>his his own path as a Hollywood producer, which is

0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:05.560
<v Speaker 2>an ambitious dream to have as a fourteen year old.

0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.240
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, no, no offense. Kid, If your dream is to

0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:13.040
<v Speaker 4>be a producer at fourteen, something is straight up wrong

0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:17.160
<v Speaker 4>with you. You can get drugs if you stay an actor, yes,

0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:21.120
<v Speaker 4>of course, But like you again, going back to Robert Evans,

0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:22.720
<v Speaker 4>if you really want.

0:20:22.480 --> 0:20:24.960
<v Speaker 2>The high grade cocaine, you've got to be a a

0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:26.520
<v Speaker 2>big league producer.

0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:30.119
<v Speaker 4>Right, saying recognizing power in that way at fourteen and

0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:34.080
<v Speaker 4>wanting power only is yeah, les theopathic.

0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:37.480
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it's like, I get, like the producing can

0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:39.720
<v Speaker 2>be a really cool job and stuff, Like I get

0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:41.399
<v Speaker 2>why people want to do it. It's just weird for

0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:45.320
<v Speaker 2>a fourteen year old who's already an actor to be like, no, producing, Yeah.

0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:48.240
<v Speaker 4>Fourteen some time, because that means he's met producers, right,

0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:50.160
<v Speaker 4>But and then like no that guy.

0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:51.919
<v Speaker 2>And again, it wouldn't be weird if he was like, no,

0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:53.639
<v Speaker 2>I think I want to be a director more. It's like,

0:20:53.760 --> 0:20:55.720
<v Speaker 2>you've been in a couple of movies. That's enough to

0:20:55.760 --> 0:20:58.320
<v Speaker 2>know that you want to be behind the camera or whatever. Producer,

0:20:58.440 --> 0:20:59.960
<v Speaker 2>that's that's a weird dream.

0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:00.480
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.

0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:04.560
<v Speaker 2>Now, I find this dream noteworthy for a couple of reasons. One,

0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:07.159
<v Speaker 2>it kind of it takes some pretty unmitigated goal to

0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:10.360
<v Speaker 2>decide at fourteen, I think I'm done acting. It's time

0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:11.080
<v Speaker 2>to run shit.

0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:17.679
<v Speaker 4>Right. Yeah, that's a that's a crazy thing, And it's impossible.

0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:19.520
<v Speaker 2>For me to know how accurate brocks later analysis of

0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:21.840
<v Speaker 2>his own thinking was. But this sounds to me like

0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:24.480
<v Speaker 2>a kid who was forced to grow up way too fast.

0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:25.480
<v Speaker 3>Remember, he's a.

0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:28.480
<v Speaker 2>Child actor, and I don't have enough to tail about

0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:30.440
<v Speaker 2>his childhood to note that his parents push him. Was

0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:34.600
<v Speaker 2>it an abusive situation? But it's rarely a good one,

0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:37.160
<v Speaker 2>especially in the nineties. I think things are a little

0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:39.639
<v Speaker 2>better now, but it's rarely good.

0:21:41.960 --> 0:21:45.879
<v Speaker 4>The times I've worked with kid actors, I watch it

0:21:45.920 --> 0:21:47.960
<v Speaker 4>and I'm like, I don't know, I don't know if

0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:48.800
<v Speaker 4>this is good for them.

0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:52.040
<v Speaker 2>I remember talking to a friend of mine who was like,

0:21:52.119 --> 0:21:55.399
<v Speaker 2>a he's like a working class director, you know, not

0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:59.520
<v Speaker 2>like a fucking giant Hollywood guy, but like a buddy

0:21:59.520 --> 0:22:02.879
<v Speaker 2>of mine who as a director, who said that, no, like,

0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:06.879
<v Speaker 2>you have someone on staff when you have child actors, yeah,

0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:10.360
<v Speaker 2>whose job is basically to protect them from their parents,

0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:11.560
<v Speaker 2>to make sure their parents.

0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:15.000
<v Speaker 4>Aren't pushing them too much, right, the whole thing, Like, yeah,

0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:17.120
<v Speaker 4>it's really weird. It's a weird dynamic.

0:22:17.320 --> 0:22:20.040
<v Speaker 2>It's a weird dynamic. It's again, I think a lot

0:22:20.080 --> 0:22:22.800
<v Speaker 2>better now, in part because of how bad shit was

0:22:22.880 --> 0:22:25.560
<v Speaker 2>for a lot of child actors in the eighties and nineties.

0:22:25.760 --> 0:22:29.000
<v Speaker 4>But even now, I'm just like, now that I see

0:22:29.000 --> 0:22:32.280
<v Speaker 4>this and I've seen it a little bit, like when

0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:35.240
<v Speaker 4>I now, I'm like, oh, I get why everyone Unsaved

0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:37.800
<v Speaker 4>by the Bell was like twenty eight, Like that's actually.

0:22:37.840 --> 0:22:39.919
<v Speaker 3>It makes sense human, It's probably fine.

0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:42.800
<v Speaker 2>We should just like suspend our disbelief a little bit

0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:46.320
<v Speaker 2>and let adult explay teenagers because the alternative.

0:22:45.720 --> 0:22:47.879
<v Speaker 4>Is fuss so bad for the people.

0:22:48.080 --> 0:22:50.879
<v Speaker 2>I think, yeah yeah, and for an idea of like

0:22:51.040 --> 0:22:54.000
<v Speaker 2>how fast Brock has had to grow up. This is

0:22:54.080 --> 0:22:56.560
<v Speaker 2>him as a talking about himself as a fourteen year

0:22:56.600 --> 0:22:59.000
<v Speaker 2>old and his attitude. I took a look at my

0:22:59.080 --> 0:23:01.200
<v Speaker 2>life and asked my myself, is this what I want

0:23:01.240 --> 0:23:03.400
<v Speaker 2>to be doing? Is this my calling? I said no,

0:23:03.560 --> 0:23:05.760
<v Speaker 2>I don't really want to be reading other people's scripts.

0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:07.520
<v Speaker 2>I don't want to be a performer. I want to

0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:09.360
<v Speaker 2>write my own script. I want to be the director

0:23:09.400 --> 0:23:10.920
<v Speaker 2>of my own life.

0:23:11.040 --> 0:23:11.720
<v Speaker 3>And I get that.

0:23:11.760 --> 0:23:14.320
<v Speaker 2>It's also like most fourteen year olds aren't in a

0:23:14.320 --> 0:23:15.840
<v Speaker 2>position where they're like, is this really what I want

0:23:15.880 --> 0:23:18.320
<v Speaker 2>to be doing with my life? Because they're fourteen, you know,

0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:22.320
<v Speaker 2>So that that says something just about where this kid's

0:23:22.359 --> 0:23:25.520
<v Speaker 2>head is. You know whose head is in a good

0:23:25.560 --> 0:23:38.240
<v Speaker 2>place mine? Our sponsors, Oh we're back, you know. To

0:23:38.320 --> 0:23:41.800
<v Speaker 2>make Sophie happy, I have stopped accusing our sponsors, like

0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:45.760
<v Speaker 2>the good people, of committing crimes against humanity, even though

0:23:45.760 --> 0:23:49.280
<v Speaker 2>they did murder those kids, So you're welcome, Sophie.

0:23:48.920 --> 0:23:49.880
<v Speaker 4>In self defense.

0:23:50.200 --> 0:23:52.720
<v Speaker 2>In self defense, those kids were coming at them. You know,

0:23:53.200 --> 0:23:56.400
<v Speaker 2>those children were complaining about being forced to pick berries

0:23:56.400 --> 0:23:58.760
<v Speaker 2>all day. You know, I guess I supposed to do.

0:23:58.960 --> 0:24:03.600
<v Speaker 1>I simply cannot defend, which is like, this.

0:24:03.280 --> 0:24:05.600
<v Speaker 2>Is like an unfair I know, I know, I know,

0:24:05.760 --> 0:24:07.240
<v Speaker 2>And we're still going to bleep the name out for

0:24:07.280 --> 0:24:09.840
<v Speaker 2>all of these it's going to be great. So choice

0:24:09.920 --> 0:24:13.200
<v Speaker 2>for old producer, Sophie. Here for old producer Sophie. You've

0:24:13.240 --> 0:24:14.760
<v Speaker 2>got Brock's dream job, Sophie.

0:24:15.640 --> 0:24:18.520
<v Speaker 1>I just want everybody to have like health insurance and

0:24:18.560 --> 0:24:23.640
<v Speaker 1>like housing and like some form of financial stability.

0:24:24.280 --> 0:24:29.720
<v Speaker 2>That's not what Brock wants at age fourteen. So Brock

0:24:29.800 --> 0:24:32.880
<v Speaker 2>has his crisis of confidence at fourteen, but he keeps

0:24:32.920 --> 0:24:35.360
<v Speaker 2>working for about a year and a half, almost two

0:24:35.480 --> 0:24:37.879
<v Speaker 2>years after this point, you know, he films nineteen ninety

0:24:37.880 --> 0:24:41.080
<v Speaker 2>seven's Legends of the Lost Tomb, where an adult apparently

0:24:41.080 --> 0:24:42.719
<v Speaker 2>pulled a prank on him and told him he had

0:24:42.720 --> 0:24:45.159
<v Speaker 2>permission to carve his name onto a pyramid while they

0:24:45.160 --> 0:24:48.240
<v Speaker 2>filmed in Egypt. Brock would later admit, it almost feels

0:24:48.320 --> 0:24:50.840
<v Speaker 2>kind of wrong, and it certainly was. You are not

0:24:50.880 --> 0:24:52.160
<v Speaker 2>supposed to do that into the pier?

0:24:52.320 --> 0:24:55.080
<v Speaker 4>He do it? Did he do that?

0:24:55.080 --> 0:24:57.520
<v Speaker 3>Apparently fourteen? Again, he's fourteen.

0:24:57.560 --> 0:24:59.760
<v Speaker 2>An adult told him he could, Like, it's not his

0:25:00.200 --> 0:25:01.960
<v Speaker 2>there's a lot that's his fault in this story, but

0:25:02.000 --> 0:25:05.080
<v Speaker 2>I won't really blame that on him. He filmed his

0:25:05.160 --> 0:25:07.920
<v Speaker 2>last three movies in nineteen ninety eight. Sixteen year old

0:25:07.920 --> 0:25:11.040
<v Speaker 2>Brock Pierce left the acting world entirely after this point. Now,

0:25:11.040 --> 0:25:14.119
<v Speaker 2>he had become an early Internet nerd. He loves gaming.

0:25:14.200 --> 0:25:16.720
<v Speaker 2>He's a big gamer as a kid, and he's you know,

0:25:16.800 --> 0:25:18.720
<v Speaker 2>pretty early on the Internet train. And he's got the

0:25:18.760 --> 0:25:21.480
<v Speaker 2>good sense and intuition to know that the Internet's going

0:25:21.520 --> 0:25:23.760
<v Speaker 2>to play a major role in the future of entertainment.

0:25:23.880 --> 0:25:28.920
<v Speaker 2>So he co founds a company, Digital Entertainment Network or DEN,

0:25:29.160 --> 0:25:34.840
<v Speaker 2>with two other founders, Mark Collins Rector and Chad Shackley. DIN,

0:25:34.960 --> 0:25:37.399
<v Speaker 2>as we'll call it, is most often described as a

0:25:37.440 --> 0:25:41.280
<v Speaker 2>precursor or prelude to YouTube. Brock says it failed because

0:25:41.320 --> 0:25:44.480
<v Speaker 2>the technology wasn't ready basically streaming video. You just couldn't

0:25:44.480 --> 0:25:46.879
<v Speaker 2>stream video well enough back in the nineties. And this

0:25:47.040 --> 0:25:50.679
<v Speaker 2>is you know, pretty much true, and that puts dinn in.

0:25:51.400 --> 0:25:53.320
<v Speaker 2>Some people give him too much credit to be like

0:25:53.359 --> 0:25:57.119
<v Speaker 2>he knew YouTube was the future before anyone else did. Now,

0:25:57.440 --> 0:26:00.879
<v Speaker 2>a number of people tried. There were a few different

0:26:00.960 --> 0:26:04.760
<v Speaker 2>failed YouTube precursors that just didn't quite work because again,

0:26:04.840 --> 0:26:08.240
<v Speaker 2>the tech wasn't there. This was dinn was one of

0:26:08.280 --> 0:26:10.760
<v Speaker 2>a number of dot com era failures, a number of

0:26:10.760 --> 0:26:12.760
<v Speaker 2>companies that kind of reached for that brass ring just

0:26:12.800 --> 0:26:16.120
<v Speaker 2>a few years too early. And it's worth looking at

0:26:16.240 --> 0:26:19.240
<v Speaker 2>exactly what Brock and his friends wanted to create though,

0:26:19.280 --> 0:26:21.959
<v Speaker 2>how they were like billing this. The company had a

0:26:22.000 --> 0:26:25.560
<v Speaker 2>thirty eight page manifesto written by Collins Rector, who seems

0:26:25.560 --> 0:26:28.000
<v Speaker 2>to have been the lead visionary. Part of it read

0:26:28.320 --> 0:26:32.120
<v Speaker 2>the boob tube zombie television is dead. Global entertainment will

0:26:32.119 --> 0:26:35.240
<v Speaker 2>be delivered over the Internet. Digital entertainment network will create

0:26:35.359 --> 0:26:38.840
<v Speaker 2>the last network. And so you can see this mix

0:26:38.880 --> 0:26:42.119
<v Speaker 2>of you could see that as prescient, like but also

0:26:42.320 --> 0:26:46.119
<v Speaker 2>very wrong because we're still just watching TV over the

0:26:46.200 --> 0:26:49.639
<v Speaker 2>internet and it didn't create the last network. There's a

0:26:49.680 --> 0:26:52.119
<v Speaker 2>shitload of streaming sites. It kind of looked for a

0:26:52.119 --> 0:26:55.040
<v Speaker 2>while like Netflix was becoming that. But there's so fucking

0:26:55.119 --> 0:26:58.439
<v Speaker 2>many streaming sites right now, right Like, that's that's not

0:26:58.520 --> 0:27:02.600
<v Speaker 2>even what happened. So Collins Rector was forty and the

0:27:02.640 --> 0:27:05.199
<v Speaker 2>oldest and most experienced of the group of founders at

0:27:05.240 --> 0:27:07.400
<v Speaker 2>den and this is where we get into things being

0:27:07.480 --> 0:27:11.880
<v Speaker 2>very problematic, and this is maybe something that Brock has

0:27:11.960 --> 0:27:14.960
<v Speaker 2>sort of been raised to not see as weird. But

0:27:15.920 --> 0:27:20.000
<v Speaker 2>Collins Rector is forty years old, Chad, who is Collins

0:27:20.000 --> 0:27:23.840
<v Speaker 2>Rector's roommate, is twenty four, and the two had met

0:27:23.880 --> 0:27:27.679
<v Speaker 2>on bulletin boards. Whereas the La Times rights quote he

0:27:27.920 --> 0:27:31.520
<v Speaker 2>Collins Rector apparently used to strike up relationships with at

0:27:31.600 --> 0:27:36.280
<v Speaker 2>least two teenaged boys, right cool. The two move to

0:27:36.320 --> 0:27:39.959
<v Speaker 2>get moved in together when Shackley was sixteen and Collin's

0:27:40.040 --> 0:27:44.000
<v Speaker 2>Rector would have been in his mid thirties. Ew Shackley's

0:27:44.040 --> 0:27:46.359
<v Speaker 2>parents seem to have thought that this was mostly a

0:27:46.400 --> 0:27:49.840
<v Speaker 2>business arrangement, that they were just like you know, founders

0:27:49.880 --> 0:27:51.399
<v Speaker 2>and starting a company and what we don't want to

0:27:51.400 --> 0:27:54.040
<v Speaker 2>get in the way of our son. This was a

0:27:54.119 --> 0:28:00.520
<v Speaker 2>sexual relationship, like this is a there's what bad I say,

0:28:00.520 --> 0:28:01.320
<v Speaker 2>sexual relationship?

0:28:01.400 --> 0:28:03.640
<v Speaker 3>This is rape? You know he's sixteen.

0:28:05.040 --> 0:28:05.960
<v Speaker 4>The parent they.

0:28:05.800 --> 0:28:08.560
<v Speaker 1>Are quote thought it was a business.

0:28:08.200 --> 0:28:10.520
<v Speaker 2>Or do let your that's all I've read about it.

0:28:10.800 --> 0:28:11.439
<v Speaker 3>You know, I don't.

0:28:11.359 --> 0:28:13.040
<v Speaker 4>Known with a grown man.

0:28:13.840 --> 0:28:17.919
<v Speaker 2>It seems like a bad judgment. I'll say that. Sorry,

0:28:18.280 --> 0:28:22.760
<v Speaker 2>that's still make money. So Brock gets involved with these

0:28:22.800 --> 0:28:26.280
<v Speaker 2>guys when Shackley's twenty four and Brock is seventeen. So

0:28:26.320 --> 0:28:29.000
<v Speaker 2>it's seventeen. Brock is in business with a forty year

0:28:29.000 --> 0:28:33.120
<v Speaker 2>old and a twenty four year old, Yeah, starting this company,

0:28:33.240 --> 0:28:35.920
<v Speaker 2>and he moves into them. They've got a mansion, as

0:28:35.920 --> 0:28:39.480
<v Speaker 2>we'll talk about, and he moves in with these guys. Oh,

0:28:39.600 --> 0:28:43.200
<v Speaker 2>shortly before Den seeks its first round of funding. Now

0:28:43.280 --> 0:28:45.040
<v Speaker 2>Den gets a lot of interest.

0:28:45.080 --> 0:28:45.840
<v Speaker 3>Again, this is the.

0:28:45.840 --> 0:28:49.760
<v Speaker 2>Dot com boom. Venture capitalists are throwing a shitload of

0:28:49.800 --> 0:28:53.000
<v Speaker 2>money in a bunch of dumb places. It attracts about

0:28:53.000 --> 0:28:56.280
<v Speaker 2>eighty eight million dollars in funding, including money from actor

0:28:56.320 --> 0:28:59.920
<v Speaker 2>Fred Savage and five million dollars from former US representative

0:29:00.000 --> 0:29:00.880
<v Speaker 2>Michael Huffington.

0:29:01.560 --> 0:29:05.120
<v Speaker 4>What I mean, they were just everyone who had a

0:29:05.160 --> 0:29:07.360
<v Speaker 4>concept like this gets five million dollars, and one of

0:29:07.400 --> 0:29:11.120
<v Speaker 4>them because YouTube, that's their lot, right, exactly exactly, That

0:29:11.280 --> 0:29:13.400
<v Speaker 4>is basically what happened, right, And this was one of

0:29:13.400 --> 0:29:17.640
<v Speaker 4>the bad bets, although they got eighty eight million. Yeah,

0:29:18.240 --> 0:29:20.000
<v Speaker 4>so this was enough to pay for this. Eighty eight

0:29:20.000 --> 0:29:22.800
<v Speaker 4>million dollars pays for about a two year wild ride

0:29:22.880 --> 0:29:25.400
<v Speaker 4>for Pearson his co founders. They all live together in

0:29:25.440 --> 0:29:28.120
<v Speaker 4>a twelve thousand square foot mansion and Encino. They all

0:29:28.200 --> 0:29:31.680
<v Speaker 4>drive sports cars. They threw these massive parties that celebrities

0:29:31.720 --> 0:29:34.480
<v Speaker 4>show up to that they bill his work events. Basically, No,

0:29:34.640 --> 0:29:37.120
<v Speaker 4>these parties are part of the business, right, We've got

0:29:37.120 --> 0:29:39.000
<v Speaker 4>to build, you know, we got to make ourselves part

0:29:39.040 --> 0:29:41.560
<v Speaker 4>of the culture in Hollywood, right, Like that's kind of

0:29:41.600 --> 0:29:42.800
<v Speaker 4>the argument they're making.

0:29:43.080 --> 0:29:45.600
<v Speaker 1>But you're not in Hollywood, You're in Encino.

0:29:46.360 --> 0:29:47.320
<v Speaker 2>You're in Encino.

0:29:47.440 --> 0:29:52.320
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, fair, this is the business model of many businesses. Yes, right,

0:29:52.440 --> 0:29:56.520
<v Speaker 4>So they're not exactly they're not quite outliers really.

0:29:57.240 --> 0:29:57.840
<v Speaker 3>Right, they're not.

0:29:57.920 --> 0:30:00.719
<v Speaker 2>They're not out like this is this is how starts.

0:30:01.080 --> 0:30:02.960
<v Speaker 2>They're not doing it in Hollywood. They're up in the valley,

0:30:02.960 --> 0:30:05.320
<v Speaker 2>but they have like their big party house mansion, right,

0:30:05.840 --> 0:30:07.080
<v Speaker 2>and they're arguing that, like, well.

0:30:06.960 --> 0:30:08.880
<v Speaker 4>These wild parties are a lot of people.

0:30:08.720 --> 0:30:11.040
<v Speaker 2>It's sexually assaulted. Are a crucial part of the business.

0:30:11.760 --> 0:30:17.520
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, yeah, prescient to their eventual business, I suppose, but right, yeah, yeah,

0:30:17.840 --> 0:30:21.040
<v Speaker 4>a warning to us maybe for the La Times quote

0:30:21.080 --> 0:30:24.640
<v Speaker 4>in his manifesto, crafted to energize early employees, Collins Rectors

0:30:24.640 --> 0:30:27.360
<v Speaker 4>set his sites on segments of so called generation Why

0:30:27.480 --> 0:30:30.320
<v Speaker 4>that he said we're being ignored by mainstream television and movies.

0:30:30.560 --> 0:30:34.400
<v Speaker 2>He identified punk rockers, extreme skaters, and hip hoppers and

0:30:34.480 --> 0:30:36.880
<v Speaker 2>put gay teenagers at the top of the list. The

0:30:36.920 --> 0:30:39.560
<v Speaker 2>company would build a huge market by global casting to

0:30:39.640 --> 0:30:43.000
<v Speaker 2>a narrow cast audience. He vowed, now here you can

0:30:43.040 --> 0:30:44.080
<v Speaker 2>see some actual insight.

0:30:44.280 --> 0:30:44.480
<v Speaker 3>Right.

0:30:44.640 --> 0:30:47.760
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it's ridiculous calling them hip hoppers. That shows

0:30:48.040 --> 0:30:51.480
<v Speaker 2>a deep disconnect with at least a chunk of pop culture.

0:30:52.200 --> 0:30:55.240
<v Speaker 2>But pointing out that like the future is of future

0:30:55.360 --> 0:30:57.680
<v Speaker 2>media is going to be catering to these like really

0:30:57.800 --> 0:31:02.760
<v Speaker 2>narrow groups of fandoms of subcultures, is like, that is

0:31:02.800 --> 0:31:05.960
<v Speaker 2>a legitimate insight, right. That is that did turn out

0:31:06.000 --> 0:31:08.280
<v Speaker 2>to be a major part of the future of media. Right,

0:31:09.160 --> 0:31:11.000
<v Speaker 2>And the fact that they seem to know like reach

0:31:11.160 --> 0:31:14.160
<v Speaker 2>in because he is a forty year old man who

0:31:14.240 --> 0:31:18.120
<v Speaker 2>is molesting teenage boys. It's all it's dark that he's

0:31:18.160 --> 0:31:22.880
<v Speaker 2>also focusing on gay teenage stories. But it is a

0:31:22.880 --> 0:31:26.000
<v Speaker 2>lot of very successful media in the twenty first century

0:31:26.320 --> 0:31:29.440
<v Speaker 2>is queer people telling queer stories. Right, So there's there's

0:31:29.440 --> 0:31:31.840
<v Speaker 2>a degree of understanding of where the media is going

0:31:31.880 --> 0:31:35.880
<v Speaker 2>that's also mixed with deeply fucked up abusive stuff. About

0:31:36.120 --> 0:31:38.680
<v Speaker 2>this guy Collins. Right, well, it's like it's it just

0:31:39.000 --> 0:31:39.760
<v Speaker 2>this guy got.

0:31:39.560 --> 0:31:42.760
<v Speaker 4>To where it was because his self serving thing happens

0:31:42.760 --> 0:31:43.800
<v Speaker 4>to have been profitable.

0:31:44.120 --> 0:31:46.840
<v Speaker 2>Right, let's talk about how he got to where he was.

0:31:46.920 --> 0:31:49.760
<v Speaker 2>So Collins rector raises this eighty eight million because he

0:31:49.800 --> 0:31:53.800
<v Speaker 2>spends months crisscrossing the country while while Brock and Shackley

0:31:53.840 --> 0:31:55.920
<v Speaker 2>are kind of working out of the mansion, College Director

0:31:55.960 --> 0:31:59.240
<v Speaker 2>spends a lot of time drumming up investment money and

0:31:59.280 --> 0:32:01.959
<v Speaker 2>giving his pitch to anyone who will listen. He brags

0:32:01.960 --> 0:32:04.280
<v Speaker 2>about the features that den is going to have. Users

0:32:04.320 --> 0:32:06.640
<v Speaker 2>are gonna be able to pause shows just as they're

0:32:06.680 --> 0:32:10.400
<v Speaker 2>watching them, Oh my god. And this is something he

0:32:10.440 --> 0:32:12.440
<v Speaker 2>points out, you'll be able to if you see an

0:32:12.480 --> 0:32:14.320
<v Speaker 2>actor wearing a shirt you like, you'll be able to

0:32:14.320 --> 0:32:16.760
<v Speaker 2>click on the shirt on screen and it'll take you

0:32:16.800 --> 0:32:18.440
<v Speaker 2>to a website where you can buy it.

0:32:18.840 --> 0:32:19.080
<v Speaker 3>Right.

0:32:19.680 --> 0:32:22.400
<v Speaker 2>And that's again that's a oh yeah, you definitely saw

0:32:22.520 --> 0:32:26.200
<v Speaker 2>pieces of our horrible future, you know, like this is

0:32:26.280 --> 0:32:29.000
<v Speaker 2>this is these are real. Both of these are real

0:32:29.040 --> 0:32:32.680
<v Speaker 2>features that are eventually materialized in various ways. Right, But

0:32:32.760 --> 0:32:38.080
<v Speaker 2>also so did a lot of people peop yes, and

0:32:38.120 --> 0:32:40.240
<v Speaker 2>more to the point, these features may as well have

0:32:40.240 --> 0:32:43.200
<v Speaker 2>been star trek bullshit in nineteen ninety eight, because about

0:32:43.200 --> 0:32:45.680
<v Speaker 2>two percent of the country had high speed internet. You

0:32:45.720 --> 0:32:48.720
<v Speaker 2>know you're not clicking a fucking T shirt. You're not

0:32:48.840 --> 0:32:50.600
<v Speaker 2>streaming video most people.

0:32:50.680 --> 0:32:52.800
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, you can say a lot of shit. This was

0:32:52.840 --> 0:32:54.240
<v Speaker 4>the time when it was easy to say a lot

0:32:54.240 --> 0:32:56.520
<v Speaker 4>of shit. But like, I, oh, can't build it yet.

0:32:56.880 --> 0:32:59.280
<v Speaker 2>I had dial up in ninety eight, And I will

0:32:59.320 --> 0:33:01.880
<v Speaker 2>tell you stream a video meant pulling up a video,

0:33:02.200 --> 0:33:06.120
<v Speaker 2>pausing it, letting it fucking buffer for like forty five minutes,

0:33:06.160 --> 0:33:11.280
<v Speaker 2>and then watching your four minute video. OK. So the

0:33:11.320 --> 0:33:15.200
<v Speaker 2>company continued to generate buzz and investments through nineteen ninety nine,

0:33:15.240 --> 0:33:18.040
<v Speaker 2>but one thing was off. No one seemed to know

0:33:18.200 --> 0:33:21.680
<v Speaker 2>where Mark Collins Rector had come from or who he

0:33:21.760 --> 0:33:24.600
<v Speaker 2>really was. The La Times tried to reach out to

0:33:24.680 --> 0:33:28.080
<v Speaker 2>dozens of his past business associates and even friends, all

0:33:28.080 --> 0:33:31.360
<v Speaker 2>of whom either denied knowing him or aftered conflicting stories

0:33:31.400 --> 0:33:34.800
<v Speaker 2>about his life. Quote Collins Rector often claimed to be

0:33:34.840 --> 0:33:37.560
<v Speaker 2>in his late twenties, and associates and employees so he

0:33:37.600 --> 0:33:39.560
<v Speaker 2>gave the impression that he had been a computer student

0:33:39.560 --> 0:33:42.600
<v Speaker 2>at UCLA, but company filing show that he is forty,

0:33:42.640 --> 0:33:45.000
<v Speaker 2>and officials at UCLA say there is no record he

0:33:45.040 --> 0:33:47.400
<v Speaker 2>was ever a student there. According to records in Los

0:33:47.440 --> 0:33:50.400
<v Speaker 2>Angeles Superior Court, he changed his name in nineteen ninety

0:33:50.440 --> 0:33:52.760
<v Speaker 2>eight from Mark Rector to Mark Collins Rector.

0:33:53.800 --> 0:33:56.040
<v Speaker 1>I don't like this man very much.

0:33:57.480 --> 0:33:58.480
<v Speaker 3>He's not a good guy.

0:33:58.960 --> 0:34:03.680
<v Speaker 2>Not a good guy, and he's great. He's straddling the

0:34:03.800 --> 0:34:07.480
<v Speaker 2>line between serial entrepreneur and con man and any as

0:34:07.520 --> 0:34:11.720
<v Speaker 2>I say often, any founder, anyone who wants to start

0:34:12.200 --> 0:34:15.439
<v Speaker 2>a tech company, especially in this period, has some con

0:34:15.480 --> 0:34:18.560
<v Speaker 2>man jobs. Stee jobs is part con man, right, because

0:34:18.560 --> 0:34:21.280
<v Speaker 2>part of what you're doing is promising and guaranteeing people

0:34:21.320 --> 0:34:23.759
<v Speaker 2>they will get something that you don't know you can

0:34:23.800 --> 0:34:26.640
<v Speaker 2>actually make yet Yeah, right, that is a key part

0:34:26.680 --> 0:34:28.560
<v Speaker 2>of the business, and that's a bit of a con

0:34:28.960 --> 0:34:31.719
<v Speaker 2>Now Jobs wound up finding people who are able to

0:34:31.760 --> 0:34:33.239
<v Speaker 2>make the things that he promised happen.

0:34:33.400 --> 0:34:36.160
<v Speaker 3>Generally not always well, it's it's.

0:34:36.040 --> 0:34:38.799
<v Speaker 4>The successes are the ones that in hindsight found the

0:34:38.880 --> 0:34:43.360
<v Speaker 4>right person like right, Like, we just have the benefit

0:34:43.400 --> 0:34:45.719
<v Speaker 4>of Elon Muskle likes being on Twitter to know he's

0:34:46.520 --> 0:34:49.200
<v Speaker 4>if he wasn't on Twitter, we simply wouldn't know this shit.

0:34:50.040 --> 0:34:52.319
<v Speaker 2>If the company was just making products and he was

0:34:52.400 --> 0:34:55.480
<v Speaker 2>never making promises or any of these like not like

0:34:55.640 --> 0:34:58.080
<v Speaker 2>he would still have a lot of his aura to him.

0:34:58.239 --> 0:35:04.759
<v Speaker 2>He just kept fucking quiet anyway. So Collins rector, yes,

0:35:04.760 --> 0:35:07.239
<v Speaker 2>straddles the line between entrepreneur and con man. Twenty years

0:35:07.239 --> 0:35:09.439
<v Speaker 2>back he had run This is because the La Times

0:35:09.440 --> 0:35:11.520
<v Speaker 2>looks into him. They found that his first business venture

0:35:11.560 --> 0:35:14.880
<v Speaker 2>was this telecom company in Florida called Telequest that he

0:35:15.000 --> 0:35:17.480
<v Speaker 2>ran like he started like twenty years ago. One of

0:35:17.480 --> 0:35:20.200
<v Speaker 2>his investors described him as a genius who was too

0:35:20.320 --> 0:35:25.920
<v Speaker 2>much into instant aggrandizement. Right, basically, he was great at

0:35:25.960 --> 0:35:28.280
<v Speaker 2>certain things. He was really smart, he was a visionary,

0:35:28.520 --> 0:35:30.239
<v Speaker 2>but he also wanted to spend all the money on

0:35:30.320 --> 0:35:34.040
<v Speaker 2>funshit like sports cars, as opposed to building a business.

0:35:34.320 --> 0:35:37.200
<v Speaker 2>That business eventually failed, and he started another one called

0:35:37.280 --> 0:35:40.400
<v Speaker 2>world coom Net, which sold travel packages and reached a

0:35:40.440 --> 0:35:43.400
<v Speaker 2>peak valuation of about one hundred million dollars before crashing

0:35:44.080 --> 0:35:47.160
<v Speaker 2>so shortly after moving in together. Because when he picks

0:35:47.239 --> 0:35:50.800
<v Speaker 2>up this kid Shackley from a message board, when Shackli's

0:35:50.840 --> 0:35:53.879
<v Speaker 2>like sixteen and they move into or younger, and they

0:35:53.920 --> 0:35:56.279
<v Speaker 2>move in together when Shackley's sixteen and they start a

0:35:56.320 --> 0:35:59.319
<v Speaker 2>business which they sell for millions of dollars and they

0:35:59.400 --> 0:36:01.800
<v Speaker 2>use that to buy the mansion this Din is operated.

0:36:02.000 --> 0:36:05.640
<v Speaker 1>He found this kid, did he like on a chapboard

0:36:05.800 --> 0:36:08.480
<v Speaker 1>and then like yeah, yeah, the kid's parents permission and

0:36:08.520 --> 0:36:10.320
<v Speaker 1>transported him over state lines.

0:36:11.280 --> 0:36:14.080
<v Speaker 2>I think it's within the state of California. But yeah,

0:36:14.120 --> 0:36:16.560
<v Speaker 2>his parents let him move in with this guy because

0:36:16.560 --> 0:36:18.040
<v Speaker 2>they think they're starting a bit. I mean, they do

0:36:18.080 --> 0:36:19.600
<v Speaker 2>start a business and they sell it and they.

0:36:19.480 --> 0:36:20.840
<v Speaker 4>Make a lot of money.

0:36:20.920 --> 0:36:23.080
<v Speaker 2>This is just also an abuse of sexual sites.

0:36:23.160 --> 0:36:25.120
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I do see where this is going.

0:36:26.160 --> 0:36:28.560
<v Speaker 2>Well, probably we don't know exactly what went on, but

0:36:28.600 --> 0:36:35.360
<v Speaker 2>that's heavily insinuated. Right, So, uh, they pay high salaries

0:36:35.440 --> 0:36:38.520
<v Speaker 2>Din does, and cash bonuses for their employees rather than

0:36:38.520 --> 0:36:41.480
<v Speaker 2>giving them stock, which is really weird. Most startups are

0:36:41.640 --> 0:36:45.440
<v Speaker 2>primarily compensating people in stock, and the idea is if

0:36:45.480 --> 0:36:47.439
<v Speaker 2>the company works out, then you get rich.

0:36:47.560 --> 0:36:47.759
<v Speaker 3>Right.

0:36:48.160 --> 0:36:50.680
<v Speaker 2>It's sort of a sign that maybe they knew this

0:36:50.880 --> 0:36:53.200
<v Speaker 2>wasn't going to work and they were operating a con

0:36:53.560 --> 0:36:57.040
<v Speaker 2>that they're paying themselves in their friends huge salaries rather

0:36:57.080 --> 0:36:59.319
<v Speaker 2>than giving a bunch of stock options up right, that's

0:36:59.360 --> 0:37:00.759
<v Speaker 2>kind of a sign I know this isn't going to

0:37:00.840 --> 0:37:03.799
<v Speaker 2>work out. In the first six months of nineteen ninety nine,

0:37:03.840 --> 0:37:07.800
<v Speaker 2>DIN made zero revenue and lost twenty million dollars. Most

0:37:07.840 --> 0:37:10.480
<v Speaker 2>of that money goes to salaries, but some of it

0:37:10.560 --> 0:37:12.839
<v Speaker 2>is spent on giant parties that brought in an a

0:37:12.960 --> 0:37:15.320
<v Speaker 2>list guest roster. I want you to guess, just guessed

0:37:15.640 --> 0:37:17.719
<v Speaker 2>one of the guests, one of the celebrity guests that

0:37:17.760 --> 0:37:20.600
<v Speaker 2>show up at these parties. The DIN boys are throwing.

0:37:21.960 --> 0:37:23.440
<v Speaker 4>What year? What year are we talking?

0:37:23.760 --> 0:37:27.359
<v Speaker 2>This is like ninety nine, two thousand, ninety eight, ninety nine,

0:37:27.400 --> 0:37:28.720
<v Speaker 2>two thousand, like that period.

0:37:29.160 --> 0:37:37.280
<v Speaker 1>Oh god, oh right, Seinfeld, it's all the friends, every

0:37:38.160 --> 0:37:38.720
<v Speaker 1>the friends.

0:37:38.840 --> 0:37:44.120
<v Speaker 3>No, it's Brian Singer. It's Brian Brian Singer and.

0:37:44.000 --> 0:37:47.840
<v Speaker 2>Gary Goddard, two of the allegedly sex pestious sex pests

0:37:47.840 --> 0:37:51.640
<v Speaker 2>in the history of sex pestitude, right, like you read

0:37:51.680 --> 0:37:54.200
<v Speaker 2>some of the allegations against Singer, who has not been

0:37:54.239 --> 0:37:56.359
<v Speaker 2>convicted of anything in a court of law. I have

0:37:56.440 --> 0:37:59.920
<v Speaker 2>to say, per Hollywood Reporter. And obviously the fact that

0:38:00.000 --> 0:38:03.800
<v Speaker 2>they're having these parties, the fact that fucking Collin's rector

0:38:03.920 --> 0:38:05.720
<v Speaker 2>is the guy he is. There's a lot of bad

0:38:05.800 --> 0:38:09.759
<v Speaker 2>things happening at these parties, kind of not unique, but

0:38:10.040 --> 0:38:12.080
<v Speaker 2>I will say they're bad things happening to young men.

0:38:12.480 --> 0:38:14.920
<v Speaker 2>Although I say young men, they're bad things happening to

0:38:15.000 --> 0:38:17.839
<v Speaker 2>young boys, which is different from some of the other

0:38:17.880 --> 0:38:21.279
<v Speaker 2>guys in Hollywood. To quote from the Hollywood Reporter, A

0:38:21.280 --> 0:38:24.040
<v Speaker 2>young man sued, claiming Collin's rector had started molesting him

0:38:24.040 --> 0:38:27.440
<v Speaker 2>when he was thirteen. More litigation followed regarding alleged goings

0:38:27.480 --> 0:38:30.640
<v Speaker 2>on at the Din mansion. One alleged victim, Alexander Burton,

0:38:30.680 --> 0:38:33.440
<v Speaker 2>claimed that Colin's rector, Pierce, and Shackley had supplied him

0:38:33.440 --> 0:38:35.680
<v Speaker 2>with alcohol and drugs even though he was under twenty one,

0:38:35.719 --> 0:38:38.920
<v Speaker 2>and that all three men subsequently assaulted him. Another accuser

0:38:39.000 --> 0:38:40.960
<v Speaker 2>was said to have written a suicide note, reading in

0:38:41.000 --> 0:38:43.200
<v Speaker 2>part I can't go on. I let them use me

0:38:43.239 --> 0:38:45.600
<v Speaker 2>as a sex tool. The note was discovered before a

0:38:45.640 --> 0:38:48.480
<v Speaker 2>suicide attempt could be made. There were also accusations that

0:38:48.520 --> 0:38:51.480
<v Speaker 2>Collin's rector would intimidate his victims by brandishing a gun.

0:38:52.880 --> 0:38:57.799
<v Speaker 2>So Jesus bad and again to make it very quick.

0:38:57.880 --> 0:39:00.880
<v Speaker 2>First off, for legal reasons, brock Pierce has not been

0:39:00.920 --> 0:39:03.400
<v Speaker 2>convicted of anything. He has not been proven in a

0:39:03.440 --> 0:39:05.800
<v Speaker 2>court of law to have abused anyone at these parties.

0:39:05.960 --> 0:39:07.880
<v Speaker 2>He has just been accused of it. There was at

0:39:07.960 --> 0:39:09.920
<v Speaker 2>least one case where things were settled out of court,

0:39:11.560 --> 0:39:14.760
<v Speaker 2>but Collin's rector has been convicted of things and brock

0:39:14.800 --> 0:39:16.560
<v Speaker 2>Pierce is not. I do want to make that clear.

0:39:16.880 --> 0:39:20.120
<v Speaker 2>But it's also clear there are allegations against brock Piers

0:39:20.200 --> 0:39:22.879
<v Speaker 2>during this time that he sexually assaulted at least one

0:39:22.960 --> 0:39:25.560
<v Speaker 2>child that I'm aware of, right, or at least one

0:39:25.600 --> 0:39:29.839
<v Speaker 2>alleged victim sorry, yeah, who was under twenty one. So

0:39:30.520 --> 0:39:33.520
<v Speaker 2>you know, interpret that how you will. I know how

0:39:33.560 --> 0:39:37.480
<v Speaker 2>I feel about brock Pierce, but again, hasn't been convicted

0:39:37.480 --> 0:39:41.280
<v Speaker 2>of anything. So the resultant lawsuit forced Mark Collins Rector

0:39:41.320 --> 0:39:44.680
<v Speaker 2>to leave the country before Din could ipo, and the

0:39:44.719 --> 0:39:47.120
<v Speaker 2>company collapsed quickly after that. About a third of the

0:39:47.160 --> 0:39:50.359
<v Speaker 2>employees were laid off and new management struggled to write

0:39:50.400 --> 0:39:54.440
<v Speaker 2>a sinking ship. Collins, Rector, under indictment for transporting miners

0:39:54.480 --> 0:39:57.239
<v Speaker 2>across state lines for sex, took Shackley and Pierce to

0:39:57.320 --> 0:39:59.640
<v Speaker 2>Spain with him in August of two thousands. So the

0:39:59.640 --> 0:40:02.759
<v Speaker 2>boys have now fled the country for Spain, where they're

0:40:02.800 --> 0:40:05.640
<v Speaker 2>living in an ice villa, one has to assume, yeah,

0:40:05.640 --> 0:40:08.640
<v Speaker 2>and probably continuing to get up to things we don't

0:40:08.800 --> 0:40:13.600
<v Speaker 2>want to think about. Yeah, one would assume. Now in

0:40:13.640 --> 0:40:16.200
<v Speaker 2>May of twenty twenty two their home, one may assume,

0:40:16.239 --> 0:40:18.160
<v Speaker 2>because in May of twenty twenty two, their home was

0:40:18.280 --> 0:40:22.759
<v Speaker 2>raided by Interpol. Like not a great sign when your

0:40:22.800 --> 0:40:24.280
<v Speaker 2>house gets rated by Interpol.

0:40:24.640 --> 0:40:26.680
<v Speaker 4>Wow, while you're on the run from the.

0:40:28.360 --> 0:40:31.600
<v Speaker 2>Right for transporting miners across state lines. And the search

0:40:31.640 --> 0:40:34.960
<v Speaker 2>of their home in Spain found weapons and thousands of

0:40:35.080 --> 0:40:39.920
<v Speaker 2>individual pieces of child sex abuse material, right, thousands of

0:40:40.000 --> 0:40:43.920
<v Speaker 2>photos of like naked kids being abused. Pierce has claimed

0:40:44.000 --> 0:40:46.360
<v Speaker 2>he was unaware that the photos were in the house.

0:40:47.840 --> 0:40:49.799
<v Speaker 2>Thousands of pieces of born I didn't know about, you know.

0:40:50.680 --> 0:40:53.759
<v Speaker 2>He and Shackley were released, but their older friend was

0:40:53.840 --> 0:40:56.880
<v Speaker 2>ultimately extradited to the United States for his many crimes

0:40:56.880 --> 0:40:59.480
<v Speaker 2>and pled guilty to five counts of trafficking miners. And again,

0:41:00.280 --> 0:41:02.879
<v Speaker 2>maybe Pierce didn't know about the photos. Legally, I have

0:41:03.000 --> 0:41:06.200
<v Speaker 2>to say that, right, because he and Shackley were released,

0:41:06.360 --> 0:41:10.960
<v Speaker 2>whereas fucking Collins Rector was extra diitted.

0:41:11.040 --> 0:41:13.239
<v Speaker 1>Right, is that motherfucker a jail for a long time?

0:41:14.760 --> 0:41:17.040
<v Speaker 2>No, a few months. He does a few months in prison,

0:41:17.640 --> 0:41:19.839
<v Speaker 2>and then he flees the country because he's still rich,

0:41:20.000 --> 0:41:22.359
<v Speaker 2>and he seems to still reside in Europe today. Last

0:41:22.400 --> 0:41:24.560
<v Speaker 2>I heard he was there in like twenty fourteen. I

0:41:24.600 --> 0:41:26.680
<v Speaker 2>don't know what he's up to right now or I hate.

0:41:26.480 --> 0:41:30.760
<v Speaker 1>It, but yeah, I hate it here.

0:41:31.560 --> 0:41:34.359
<v Speaker 2>Yeah it's great. It's not great, it's not good. Yeah,

0:41:34.480 --> 0:41:35.480
<v Speaker 2>Planet Earth.

0:41:35.320 --> 0:41:38.239
<v Speaker 4>In this time. Yes, that's that's what I mean.

0:41:39.800 --> 0:41:42.600
<v Speaker 2>After this all kind of blows over, Pierce returns to

0:41:42.640 --> 0:41:45.040
<v Speaker 2>the US. He settles the claims against him. He has

0:41:45.120 --> 0:41:47.920
<v Speaker 2>never been ignowed. He has never acknowledged or been convicted

0:41:47.920 --> 0:41:51.080
<v Speaker 2>of any wrongdoing during this period of time. But while

0:41:51.080 --> 0:41:53.200
<v Speaker 2>he was in Spain before he goes back to the US,

0:41:53.280 --> 0:41:58.040
<v Speaker 2>he creates his next company, Internet Gaming Entertainment or IG.

0:41:58.360 --> 0:42:01.840
<v Speaker 2>E heard of this company, Andrew.

0:42:02.560 --> 0:42:05.000
<v Speaker 4>I thought you were gonna say IGN. I guess now this,

0:42:05.040 --> 0:42:06.600
<v Speaker 4>so did I for a second when I first started

0:42:06.600 --> 0:42:10.880
<v Speaker 4>readings with No, he didn't make ign right, No he didn't.

0:42:11.560 --> 0:42:13.640
<v Speaker 2>Did you ever play World of Warcraft like after it

0:42:13.680 --> 0:42:15.120
<v Speaker 2>came out, like right after it came out?

0:42:16.200 --> 0:42:19.000
<v Speaker 4>Uh, not as much, but like I've I've been in

0:42:19.040 --> 0:42:20.200
<v Speaker 4>the room when people are playing it.

0:42:20.280 --> 0:42:22.560
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Yeah, I was big into World of Warcraft right

0:42:22.560 --> 0:42:24.439
<v Speaker 2>at for like the first two years after it came out,

0:42:24.520 --> 0:42:28.880
<v Speaker 2>like release the first expansion pack basically, and if you

0:42:28.920 --> 0:42:31.319
<v Speaker 2>were playing well during that period, there's a good chance

0:42:31.360 --> 0:42:33.720
<v Speaker 2>you know what IgE is because this is the company

0:42:33.719 --> 0:42:37.040
<v Speaker 2>that made gold farming into a thing, right, Oh, like

0:42:37.239 --> 0:42:40.360
<v Speaker 2>that this is They're not. There were others obviously, but

0:42:40.440 --> 0:42:43.480
<v Speaker 2>IgE was the big gold farming company, and they were

0:42:43.520 --> 0:42:46.839
<v Speaker 2>the company that kind of established gold farming as an

0:42:46.920 --> 0:42:49.040
<v Speaker 2>industry for the chunk of time that.

0:42:49.040 --> 0:42:50.399
<v Speaker 4>It was right. Oh god.

0:42:50.560 --> 0:42:54.200
<v Speaker 2>Now the goal with IgE, though, this is what's important.

0:42:54.320 --> 0:42:57.280
<v Speaker 2>The company's goal was not to do what it became,

0:42:57.320 --> 0:43:00.480
<v Speaker 2>which was it was basically farming gold in video games

0:43:00.520 --> 0:43:04.440
<v Speaker 2>like EverQuest and World of Warcraft against the express desires

0:43:04.480 --> 0:43:07.560
<v Speaker 2>and the stated rules of the developers that made those games.

0:43:07.680 --> 0:43:07.839
<v Speaker 3>Right.

0:43:08.480 --> 0:43:13.120
<v Speaker 2>IG's actual goal was to enable and to convince the

0:43:13.160 --> 0:43:17.600
<v Speaker 2>gaming industry to enable trading of real money for virtual goods,

0:43:17.960 --> 0:43:20.400
<v Speaker 2>which is the thing that all basically all big games

0:43:20.440 --> 0:43:24.080
<v Speaker 2>do now, right, Yeah, this was the idea IgE wanted

0:43:24.120 --> 0:43:26.919
<v Speaker 2>to push. That that was controversial at this point in time.

0:43:27.440 --> 0:43:29.960
<v Speaker 2>Collin's rector would later claim that he was the shadow

0:43:30.000 --> 0:43:32.200
<v Speaker 2>founder of the company that he had the idea and

0:43:32.239 --> 0:43:35.719
<v Speaker 2>Brock took the credit. Pierce denies this. I don't know

0:43:35.760 --> 0:43:38.560
<v Speaker 2>the truth, But as the Hollywood Reporter makes clear quote,

0:43:38.880 --> 0:43:41.839
<v Speaker 2>what's unclear is when Colin's Rector stopped being a part

0:43:41.880 --> 0:43:44.600
<v Speaker 2>of Pierce's life. In a lawsuit against Pierce, a former

0:43:44.600 --> 0:43:46.640
<v Speaker 2>partner in IgE claimed that Pierce had told him in

0:43:46.640 --> 0:43:49.279
<v Speaker 2>two thousand and five that Colin's rector, then living overseas

0:43:49.320 --> 0:43:51.960
<v Speaker 2>and according to the FED, still consorting with teenage boys,

0:43:52.160 --> 0:43:55.640
<v Speaker 2>had been blackmailing him, threatening to damage IgE in the

0:43:55.640 --> 0:43:59.440
<v Speaker 2>eyes of investors. Pierce's rep says Collin's rector never threatened

0:43:59.440 --> 0:44:02.000
<v Speaker 2>to blackmail denies that Pierce ever made such a statement.

0:44:02.320 --> 0:44:05.239
<v Speaker 2>Pierce separated in any business relationship with Den failed and

0:44:05.280 --> 0:44:08.640
<v Speaker 2>the Internet bubble burst in two thousand. Pierce's personal relationship

0:44:08.640 --> 0:44:10.840
<v Speaker 2>with Collin's rector lasted until two thousand and three. The

0:44:10.880 --> 0:44:14.080
<v Speaker 2>rep says that's after Collin's Rector's indictment in two thousand

0:44:14.120 --> 0:44:16.000
<v Speaker 2>and after interpoll showed up at the house in Spain

0:44:16.040 --> 0:44:18.359
<v Speaker 2>in two thousand and two. But Pierce's rep says at

0:44:18.360 --> 0:44:21.400
<v Speaker 2>the time of his arrest, collins rector asserted his innocence.

0:44:21.640 --> 0:44:25.600
<v Speaker 2>It wasn't until Pierce received additional information concerning Colin's rector's

0:44:25.840 --> 0:44:31.120
<v Speaker 2>improper actions that he separated entirely. So, you know, I

0:44:31.120 --> 0:44:34.319
<v Speaker 2>don't I mean, he's still I don't think. I think

0:44:34.360 --> 0:44:36.960
<v Speaker 2>he basically knew. He is very young at this point,

0:44:37.000 --> 0:44:38.920
<v Speaker 2>but he has also been involved in a lot of

0:44:38.960 --> 0:44:42.040
<v Speaker 2>bad behavior. He is an adult now and he right,

0:44:42.160 --> 0:44:46.160
<v Speaker 2>you know, I don't have a lot of sympathy more now,

0:44:46.360 --> 0:44:49.759
<v Speaker 2>I will say, eventually Collin's Rector exits Pierce's life and

0:44:49.800 --> 0:44:54.440
<v Speaker 2>whatever impact he had on IgE, this is Pierce's baby

0:44:54.680 --> 0:44:57.319
<v Speaker 2>for the majority of the time that the company exists, right,

0:44:57.840 --> 0:45:00.720
<v Speaker 2>and once Collin's Rectors kind of out of the picture,

0:45:01.200 --> 0:45:03.759
<v Speaker 2>you see, there's maybe this need in Pierce to have

0:45:03.840 --> 0:45:07.280
<v Speaker 2>an older man to give him advice and professional assistance.

0:45:07.360 --> 0:45:10.759
<v Speaker 2>I mean, that's a good idea professionally in cases like this,

0:45:11.440 --> 0:45:14.840
<v Speaker 2>but also it seems to be something Pierce maybe seeks

0:45:14.880 --> 0:45:18.080
<v Speaker 2>out kind of pathologically, and in this case, the next

0:45:18.160 --> 0:45:21.680
<v Speaker 2>older man that he seeks out as a mentor is

0:45:21.719 --> 0:45:22.520
<v Speaker 2>Steve Bannon.

0:45:23.560 --> 0:45:28.600
<v Speaker 4>Now it may said, what the fuck, it's not.

0:45:28.560 --> 0:45:30.719
<v Speaker 3>Great, it's fucked up.

0:45:30.760 --> 0:45:33.920
<v Speaker 2>Obviously we know who Bannon is, and heywy becomes it

0:45:34.000 --> 0:45:38.080
<v Speaker 2>makes sense, right at a time. Steve is a fabulously

0:45:38.120 --> 0:45:40.880
<v Speaker 2>wealthy producer. Right, he gets his start as like a

0:45:40.880 --> 0:45:45.879
<v Speaker 2>banker basically, but he's he helps like make fucking Seinfeld, right,

0:45:46.360 --> 0:45:49.600
<v Speaker 2>And Brock had wanted to be a producer himself. He

0:45:49.840 --> 0:45:53.360
<v Speaker 2>came from Hollywood. So Bannon is the sort of authority

0:45:53.360 --> 0:45:57.040
<v Speaker 2>figure Pierce had grown up listening to and respecting, right, Like,

0:45:57.120 --> 0:45:59.480
<v Speaker 2>he clearly has a lot of respect for the job.

0:45:59.600 --> 0:46:02.200
<v Speaker 2>So it makes sense that Bannon would be a guy

0:46:02.239 --> 0:46:05.120
<v Speaker 2>that he kind of inherently trust. So by the time

0:46:05.200 --> 0:46:08.360
<v Speaker 2>Bannon came to IgE, World of Warcraft was the biggest

0:46:08.400 --> 0:46:11.520
<v Speaker 2>game in history, and there were millions being made selling

0:46:11.560 --> 0:46:14.360
<v Speaker 2>easy access to gold and other in game resources that

0:46:14.520 --> 0:46:17.400
<v Speaker 2>normally you had to grind for dozens of hours to get.

0:46:17.880 --> 0:46:21.040
<v Speaker 2>IgE had set up gold farms in China using cheap

0:46:21.080 --> 0:46:23.799
<v Speaker 2>workers who could spend long hours doing that in game

0:46:23.800 --> 0:46:27.480
<v Speaker 2>grinding for the player. Now, this wasn't illegal, right, This

0:46:27.600 --> 0:46:29.759
<v Speaker 2>is not a crime to operate a business like this,

0:46:29.880 --> 0:46:32.560
<v Speaker 2>but it is a gray market. This may seem kind

0:46:32.560 --> 0:46:34.920
<v Speaker 2>of hard to believe given the present realities of the

0:46:35.000 --> 0:46:38.560
<v Speaker 2>video game industry, but game developers initially had a big

0:46:38.600 --> 0:46:41.239
<v Speaker 2>issue with the idea of gamers using real money to

0:46:41.239 --> 0:46:44.080
<v Speaker 2>buy in game assets. For one thing, if you actually

0:46:44.120 --> 0:46:47.040
<v Speaker 2>care about making a good game, if that's your interest,

0:46:47.200 --> 0:46:50.840
<v Speaker 2>is actually making a game that's like a quality game

0:46:50.920 --> 0:46:54.440
<v Speaker 2>in its construction, letting people buy their way to have

0:46:54.600 --> 0:46:59.080
<v Speaker 2>better stuff rex the game, right, Like, it kind of

0:46:59.120 --> 0:47:00.719
<v Speaker 2>fucks up the ole thing, you know.

0:47:00.840 --> 0:47:02.799
<v Speaker 4>Well, it's like it's like the two goals. It's like,

0:47:02.960 --> 0:47:04.839
<v Speaker 4>is your actual goal as a studo as a game

0:47:04.880 --> 0:47:06.759
<v Speaker 4>studio to make a good game or is it to

0:47:06.840 --> 0:47:10.120
<v Speaker 4>make money? Right? Those are not necessarily rights in it.

0:47:10.320 --> 0:47:13.280
<v Speaker 2>And the studios land on make money, But the game

0:47:13.320 --> 0:47:16.920
<v Speaker 2>developers themselves often were very hesitant to embrace this kind

0:47:16.960 --> 0:47:21.000
<v Speaker 2>of thing initially, right. And so there's also like World

0:47:21.040 --> 0:47:24.000
<v Speaker 2>of Warcraft has an in game economy that Blizzard spent

0:47:24.200 --> 0:47:26.920
<v Speaker 2>quite a bit of time trying to set up and

0:47:27.000 --> 0:47:30.840
<v Speaker 2>make like functional. Right, Yeah, So they're also upset that

0:47:30.880 --> 0:47:32.719
<v Speaker 2>this is fucking up the end game economy, so they

0:47:32.760 --> 0:47:35.640
<v Speaker 2>sought to ban gold Farmers whenever they cropped up. In

0:47:35.680 --> 0:47:38.440
<v Speaker 2>two thousand and five, Pierce met Bannon and brought him

0:47:38.480 --> 0:47:41.239
<v Speaker 2>into IgE to act as the adult in the room.

0:47:41.760 --> 0:47:44.600
<v Speaker 2>The company needed major investment money if it was going

0:47:44.640 --> 0:47:49.479
<v Speaker 2>to survive and thrive, and Bannon basically Bannon Pierc's Bannon

0:47:49.560 --> 0:47:53.880
<v Speaker 2>is the trusted old head who investors would because Pierce

0:47:54.120 --> 0:47:58.520
<v Speaker 2>has a reputation, right, He's somebody who people have a

0:47:58.560 --> 0:48:01.040
<v Speaker 2>degree of faith, and they also see really young. So

0:48:01.080 --> 0:48:03.000
<v Speaker 2>if they're going to invest serious money in a company

0:48:03.040 --> 0:48:04.680
<v Speaker 2>he's starting, they want to see there's a guy like

0:48:04.719 --> 0:48:09.600
<v Speaker 2>Steve Bannon, you know. So that's why Bannon's there. Bannon

0:48:09.680 --> 0:48:12.000
<v Speaker 2>visits the company's Hong Kong offices and he works out

0:48:12.000 --> 0:48:15.280
<v Speaker 2>a deal where by Goldman Sachs, his old employer, invested

0:48:15.320 --> 0:48:18.600
<v Speaker 2>sixty million dollars and he became the VP of IgE.

0:48:19.480 --> 0:48:23.440
<v Speaker 2>Now it's important to note IG's pretty evil before Bannon

0:48:23.520 --> 0:48:26.080
<v Speaker 2>comes on board. Not only is it kind of ruining

0:48:26.120 --> 0:48:28.839
<v Speaker 2>the spirit of the games that its farmers operate in,

0:48:29.080 --> 0:48:32.960
<v Speaker 2>but the whole business hinges on a lot of questionable activity.

0:48:33.040 --> 0:48:35.680
<v Speaker 2>As the Washington Boast summarizes, it's.

0:48:35.520 --> 0:48:38.920
<v Speaker 4>Like a digital sweatshop. Right, yeah, it is a digital sweatshop,

0:48:39.040 --> 0:48:42.440
<v Speaker 4>right yeah. IgE employees in the Hong Kong office created

0:48:42.440 --> 0:48:45.200
<v Speaker 4>accounts for the company's delivery avatars using the names and

0:48:45.239 --> 0:48:48.400
<v Speaker 4>home addresses of unwinning US residents picked at random. In

0:48:48.440 --> 0:48:51.720
<v Speaker 4>a phone directory. The company used dial up phone service

0:48:51.719 --> 0:48:53.840
<v Speaker 4>that connected to servers in the United States, making it

0:48:53.840 --> 0:48:56.319
<v Speaker 4>appear that they were using computers there rather than in

0:48:56.360 --> 0:48:59.399
<v Speaker 4>Hong Kong. We were spending twenty thousand dollars a month

0:48:59.400 --> 0:49:05.640
<v Speaker 4>on dial up service. One employee said, So that's shady.

0:49:05.800 --> 0:49:06.080
<v Speaker 3>Fuck.

0:49:06.360 --> 0:49:10.359
<v Speaker 4>We have zero point five versions business so insane? Oh

0:49:10.400 --> 0:49:10.880
<v Speaker 4>my god.

0:49:11.200 --> 0:49:16.520
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, speaking of stealing people's identities for profit, you know

0:49:16.560 --> 0:49:19.520
<v Speaker 2>who loves to do that besides me?

0:49:20.560 --> 0:49:21.040
<v Speaker 4>That's right?

0:49:21.440 --> 0:49:35.279
<v Speaker 2>Is our sponsors killing me? And we're bad? So uh.

0:49:35.640 --> 0:49:39.520
<v Speaker 2>Gold farmers working for IgE in China made as little

0:49:39.560 --> 0:49:42.560
<v Speaker 2>as twenty five cents an hour, laboring in cramped factories

0:49:42.560 --> 0:49:46.399
<v Speaker 2>the New York Times described as virtual sweatshops. Bannon's job

0:49:46.480 --> 0:49:50.040
<v Speaker 2>then was to convince old money people that this business

0:49:50.120 --> 0:49:53.840
<v Speaker 2>is a gold mine. And unfortunately he has some success

0:49:53.840 --> 0:49:57.120
<v Speaker 2>with this initially, but he doesn't succeed enough. He's able

0:49:57.120 --> 0:49:59.040
<v Speaker 2>to get a lot of money for IgE, but the

0:49:59.040 --> 0:50:01.399
<v Speaker 2>company still doesn't like work out in the long run,

0:50:01.440 --> 0:50:04.520
<v Speaker 2>because he's not able to convince the people who matter most, right,

0:50:04.840 --> 0:50:10.560
<v Speaker 2>the executives running game companies like Blizzard, Because ultimately, IgE

0:50:10.760 --> 0:50:13.680
<v Speaker 2>can only be viable as a business if Blizzard stops

0:50:13.760 --> 0:50:16.920
<v Speaker 2>banning their farmers and deleting the accounts and stuff that

0:50:17.000 --> 0:50:18.640
<v Speaker 2>have all of the money that they're trying to transfer

0:50:18.719 --> 0:50:22.360
<v Speaker 2>to people, and Blizzard refuses to do that. They just

0:50:22.520 --> 0:50:27.320
<v Speaker 2>do not initially accept, like obviously Activision. Blizzard eventually becomes

0:50:27.400 --> 0:50:31.080
<v Speaker 2>perfectly fine with in game purchases and all this shit. Right,

0:50:31.120 --> 0:50:32.680
<v Speaker 2>they have no issue with these micro.

0:50:32.640 --> 0:50:36.040
<v Speaker 4>I mean on any like even the philosophical people that

0:50:36.080 --> 0:50:38.960
<v Speaker 4>agree with them. It's not that IG. It's not the

0:50:39.320 --> 0:50:42.120
<v Speaker 4>what Ige's doing that they don't like. It's that IG's

0:50:42.200 --> 0:50:44.120
<v Speaker 4>not in house, right like right.

0:50:44.040 --> 0:50:46.879
<v Speaker 2>Right, I mean I think there is from people who

0:50:47.000 --> 0:50:49.319
<v Speaker 2>care about the quality of the game. There's people who

0:50:49.360 --> 0:50:51.120
<v Speaker 2>just shown issue with what they're doing. But right, yeah,

0:50:51.200 --> 0:50:52.879
<v Speaker 2>you are correct when it comes to the.

0:50:52.920 --> 0:50:55.680
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, there's certainly plenty of people, even at the time

0:50:55.680 --> 0:50:58.040
<v Speaker 4>at Blizzard that were like, yeah, oh my god, yeah

0:50:58.040 --> 0:50:59.840
<v Speaker 4>in transections amazing, and.

0:51:00.040 --> 0:51:01.800
<v Speaker 3>That's why it's it's done that these guys.

0:51:02.239 --> 0:51:05.560
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, IGU was ever hoping the company would like that

0:51:05.680 --> 0:51:09.360
<v Speaker 2>Blizzard or whoever, would would accept there being a middleman

0:51:10.000 --> 0:51:12.600
<v Speaker 2>he makes money off of like their in game world,

0:51:12.680 --> 0:51:16.239
<v Speaker 2>Like that's what, Yeah, why would they be okay with this?

0:51:17.719 --> 0:51:22.920
<v Speaker 2>So Blizzard constantly raids IgE. Right, They they find people's accounts,

0:51:22.920 --> 0:51:25.840
<v Speaker 2>they delete them, they ban people who are buying gold.

0:51:26.160 --> 0:51:28.720
<v Speaker 2>There's a bunch of lawsuits from people who bought gold

0:51:28.800 --> 0:51:29.560
<v Speaker 2>and didn't get it.

0:51:29.680 --> 0:51:32.320
<v Speaker 4>YadA, YadA, YadA. Causes a bunch of problems for IgE.

0:51:32.840 --> 0:51:36.120
<v Speaker 4>Pierce eventually has to step down as CEO and Bannon

0:51:36.160 --> 0:51:38.960
<v Speaker 4>replaces him, And it's kind of framed as like Bannon

0:51:39.520 --> 0:51:42.400
<v Speaker 4>edges Pierce out, but that doesn't It seems to have

0:51:42.440 --> 0:51:45.160
<v Speaker 4>been perfectly friendly, like Pierce seems to have been fine

0:51:45.200 --> 0:51:47.560
<v Speaker 4>with this and understood that, like this is what's you

0:51:47.560 --> 0:51:49.400
<v Speaker 4>know we need to do for the next stage of

0:51:49.440 --> 0:51:49.880
<v Speaker 4>the business.

0:51:49.960 --> 0:51:50.680
<v Speaker 3>Right Yeah.

0:51:50.760 --> 0:51:55.640
<v Speaker 2>Ultimately IgE stops selling gold entirely, and under Bannon, the

0:51:55.680 --> 0:51:59.960
<v Speaker 2>company is renamed Affinity Media Holdings and instead makes it

0:52:00.000 --> 0:52:02.839
<v Speaker 2>its money running and operating a series of chat rooms

0:52:02.880 --> 0:52:08.720
<v Speaker 2>and forums for gamers. So the company pivots to running

0:52:08.760 --> 0:52:13.400
<v Speaker 2>places where gamers communicate and socialize. And Bannon first he

0:52:13.560 --> 0:52:17.480
<v Speaker 2>sees he sees how angry these gamers had gotten at

0:52:17.520 --> 0:52:20.160
<v Speaker 2>gold farming, and he starts paying attention to the social

0:52:20.239 --> 0:52:23.719
<v Speaker 2>dynamics and these online communities, and it gives him a horrible,

0:52:24.200 --> 0:52:26.880
<v Speaker 2>awful idea. And I'm going to quote from the Washington

0:52:26.920 --> 0:52:30.680
<v Speaker 2>Post here, Bannon became fascinated with a collective power of

0:52:30.719 --> 0:52:34.040
<v Speaker 2>gamers who gathered on these sites. According to journalist Joshua Green,

0:52:34.080 --> 0:52:36.520
<v Speaker 2>who wrote a book Devil's Bargain about Bannon's rise in

0:52:36.560 --> 0:52:40.160
<v Speaker 2>the Trump administration, selling virtual currency was highly unpopular with

0:52:40.200 --> 0:52:43.320
<v Speaker 2>many gamers, and they railed against IgE in these chat rooms,

0:52:43.440 --> 0:52:46.160
<v Speaker 2>putting pressure on the companies that operated the games not

0:52:46.200 --> 0:52:49.800
<v Speaker 2>to partner with IgE. These guys, these rootless white males,

0:52:49.840 --> 0:52:54.760
<v Speaker 2>had monster power, Bannon said, right, so he's he's starting

0:52:54.800 --> 0:52:57.880
<v Speaker 2>to realize. Okay, this kind of fucked us, the power

0:52:57.920 --> 0:53:01.000
<v Speaker 2>that these these inco eight groups of angry white dudes

0:53:01.000 --> 0:53:03.600
<v Speaker 2>on the internet. It kind of fucked the business. Now,

0:53:04.160 --> 0:53:07.359
<v Speaker 2>but you could manipulate these guys. You could tune them

0:53:07.440 --> 0:53:10.200
<v Speaker 2>up and turn them on an enemy and unleash them

0:53:10.239 --> 0:53:12.719
<v Speaker 2>as a weapon, and they have the ability to do

0:53:12.800 --> 0:53:17.600
<v Speaker 2>some damage. Right. This is where Bannon makes that realization. Right,

0:53:17.760 --> 0:53:20.440
<v Speaker 2>And I know, folks that were fifty five minutes in

0:53:20.480 --> 0:53:23.160
<v Speaker 2>and I barely talked about Epstein passed the introduction. Trust me,

0:53:23.200 --> 0:53:26.440
<v Speaker 2>we're coming back to him. This is all necessary groundwork

0:53:26.520 --> 0:53:29.800
<v Speaker 2>for you to understand Epstein's role in all this. So

0:53:31.080 --> 0:53:34.000
<v Speaker 2>Brock Pierce would later describe Steve Bannon as his right

0:53:34.040 --> 0:53:36.839
<v Speaker 2>hand man for like seven years, which again suggests there

0:53:36.840 --> 0:53:39.320
<v Speaker 2>were no hard feelings about Bannon replacing him a CEO

0:53:39.360 --> 0:53:43.040
<v Speaker 2>of IgE. Not long after leaving the company, Brock gets

0:53:43.040 --> 0:53:45.560
<v Speaker 2>involved in the world of cryptocurrency. That's kind of his

0:53:45.760 --> 0:53:50.680
<v Speaker 2>next move after gaming. He founds a company called Blockchain Capital,

0:53:51.120 --> 0:53:54.240
<v Speaker 2>and he is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative

0:53:54.320 --> 0:53:56.920
<v Speaker 2>that he found this under right, Well, he's like a

0:53:57.360 --> 0:54:00.440
<v Speaker 2>part of the Clinton Global Initiative as he creates Blockchain Capital,

0:54:00.719 --> 0:54:04.040
<v Speaker 2>which again, the Clintons are very tied to Epstein, right,

0:54:04.080 --> 0:54:06.439
<v Speaker 2>And that maybe part of how Jeffrey Epstein heard about

0:54:06.520 --> 0:54:10.000
<v Speaker 2>Brock Pierce for the first time is because Pierce's is

0:54:10.120 --> 0:54:14.600
<v Speaker 2>tied in through the Clinton Global Initiative. Now, let's perspective

0:54:14.600 --> 0:54:17.920
<v Speaker 2>shift back to our old pal, Jeffrey. He had served

0:54:17.960 --> 0:54:19.880
<v Speaker 2>time I'm two thousand and eight and two thousand and

0:54:20.000 --> 0:54:24.880
<v Speaker 2>nine for soliciting sex from a minor, right, but he

0:54:24.920 --> 0:54:27.359
<v Speaker 2>was by twenty ten a free man. He was still rich,

0:54:27.400 --> 0:54:30.000
<v Speaker 2>and he was still influential, but he was something of

0:54:30.040 --> 0:54:32.200
<v Speaker 2>a pariah, at least to normal people. He's not a

0:54:32.200 --> 0:54:34.840
<v Speaker 2>pariah to the power elite. He's not a parrie to

0:54:34.880 --> 0:54:36.880
<v Speaker 2>the people running the New York Times, to a lot

0:54:36.920 --> 0:54:39.160
<v Speaker 2>of people working at the Times. He's not a prior

0:54:39.160 --> 0:54:41.880
<v Speaker 2>to a lot of Harvard professors, to a lot of

0:54:41.920 --> 0:54:45.480
<v Speaker 2>famous academics and scientists, to a lot of celebrities. But

0:54:45.520 --> 0:54:49.680
<v Speaker 2>he's like, in public is a guy who got arrested

0:54:49.719 --> 0:54:53.120
<v Speaker 2>for fucking a kid, you know, right, and this aid

0:54:53.160 --> 0:54:56.399
<v Speaker 2>at him. He hates the fact that, like he had

0:54:56.440 --> 0:54:58.480
<v Speaker 2>to take an l right, and that's he sees it

0:54:58.520 --> 0:55:00.359
<v Speaker 2>as this kind of petty because his friends are like, man,

0:55:00.440 --> 0:55:02.719
<v Speaker 2>you kind of got off light, which he did. But

0:55:02.760 --> 0:55:05.640
<v Speaker 2>it really bugs him that he had to suffer any

0:55:05.680 --> 0:55:09.160
<v Speaker 2>consequences at all, because he doesn't think he's done anything wrong. Now,

0:55:09.200 --> 0:55:10.240
<v Speaker 2>it would take years.

0:55:10.360 --> 0:55:13.959
<v Speaker 4>Evidence suggests that his peer group will not face consequences

0:55:13.960 --> 0:55:17.319
<v Speaker 4>for the same behavior, so in a something.

0:55:17.080 --> 0:55:20.839
<v Speaker 2>Of resigned or whatever. But yes, yeah, yeah, So it's

0:55:20.840 --> 0:55:23.760
<v Speaker 2>going to take years for the reality of Epstein's conviction

0:55:24.040 --> 0:55:27.239
<v Speaker 2>and what the scattered stories from his victims meant to

0:55:27.320 --> 0:55:31.160
<v Speaker 2>coalesce into a widespread understanding of his crimes. Right in

0:55:31.160 --> 0:55:33.919
<v Speaker 2>twenty ten, two nine ten, not a lot of people

0:55:33.960 --> 0:55:37.320
<v Speaker 2>are talking about Epstein is like this vast child sex

0:55:37.360 --> 0:55:40.319
<v Speaker 2>trafficker who has this like secret empire that all of

0:55:40.360 --> 0:55:43.640
<v Speaker 2>the world that takes some time to build up as

0:55:43.880 --> 0:55:46.160
<v Speaker 2>more stories come out, as our understanding gains brough are

0:55:46.160 --> 0:55:49.319
<v Speaker 2>there's some people who who understand that about him from

0:55:49.320 --> 0:55:53.120
<v Speaker 2>this stage, particularly his victims, but it's not widely known

0:55:53.320 --> 0:55:54.480
<v Speaker 2>at this point.

0:55:54.840 --> 0:55:55.399
<v Speaker 3>But he can.

0:55:55.480 --> 0:55:57.880
<v Speaker 2>He's kind of watching as he's sitting in his Manhattan

0:55:57.880 --> 0:56:00.839
<v Speaker 2>penthouse or on his private sex island's slowly over the years,

0:56:00.920 --> 0:56:04.520
<v Speaker 2>watching the story come together, watching people start to become

0:56:04.560 --> 0:56:07.080
<v Speaker 2>more and more aware of what he'd done, and he

0:56:07.200 --> 0:56:10.200
<v Speaker 2>seems to This is I think his radicalizing the moment,

0:56:10.239 --> 0:56:13.920
<v Speaker 2>because he sees a few different enemies coalescing to ruin

0:56:14.000 --> 0:56:18.919
<v Speaker 2>his life. Right, and this alliance is roughly a mix

0:56:19.000 --> 0:56:22.239
<v Speaker 2>between You've got your busy body feminists, right, including a

0:56:22.239 --> 0:56:25.840
<v Speaker 2>lot of his victims. You've got meddlesome reporters, and of

0:56:25.880 --> 0:56:29.560
<v Speaker 2>course you've got you know, the actual people that he heard, right,

0:56:29.560 --> 0:56:32.640
<v Speaker 2>You've got these like feminist activists, you've got these metalsome journalists,

0:56:32.680 --> 0:56:34.960
<v Speaker 2>and you've got his former victims, all of whom won't

0:56:35.000 --> 0:56:35.520
<v Speaker 2>shut up.

0:56:35.800 --> 0:56:35.960
<v Speaker 4>Right.

0:56:36.080 --> 0:56:38.960
<v Speaker 2>That's how Epstein sees this, and the answer to all

0:56:39.000 --> 0:56:41.600
<v Speaker 2>of these problems, he seems to have decided was to

0:56:41.719 --> 0:56:44.640
<v Speaker 2>use his position of influence to push for a change

0:56:44.680 --> 0:56:48.200
<v Speaker 2>in the culture, to a culture where maybe journalists, or

0:56:48.239 --> 0:56:50.120
<v Speaker 2>at least the kind of journalists who will report on

0:56:50.160 --> 0:56:53.040
<v Speaker 2>this stuff, have less interest, where maybe women are more

0:56:53.040 --> 0:56:55.960
<v Speaker 2>frightened to speak up, and where maybe victims have fewer rights.

0:56:56.200 --> 0:57:01.400
<v Speaker 2>You know, I really do think a lot of his life. Yeah,

0:57:01.400 --> 0:57:04.239
<v Speaker 2>he's a cool dude. So his feelings on all of

0:57:04.280 --> 0:57:07.359
<v Speaker 2>this evolved as he tried to crack down on uncomfortable

0:57:07.360 --> 0:57:09.480
<v Speaker 2>reporting about his life. In a write up for the

0:57:09.480 --> 0:57:13.120
<v Speaker 2>website protos cast Piance writes, in an effort to halt

0:57:13.120 --> 0:57:16.600
<v Speaker 2>the decline, Epstein seeks out help from Alfred Secl aka

0:57:16.720 --> 0:57:20.160
<v Speaker 2>al Scyl, a serial scammer and illusionist who's been dating

0:57:20.160 --> 0:57:24.520
<v Speaker 2>Gillan Maxwell's sister Isabelle for years. Epstein tasks Secle with

0:57:24.560 --> 0:57:26.840
<v Speaker 2>what he presumes to be a relatively cheap and easy

0:57:26.920 --> 0:57:30.360
<v Speaker 2>job wipe the Internet of his sins. This proves to

0:57:30.400 --> 0:57:33.520
<v Speaker 2>be a pipe dream, whether due to Secyl's own incompetence

0:57:33.520 --> 0:57:36.520
<v Speaker 2>in greed or due to Epstein's unrepaarable reputation A twenty

0:57:36.560 --> 0:57:39.080
<v Speaker 2>five thousand dollars job becomes a forty five thousand dollars

0:57:39.200 --> 0:57:43.240
<v Speaker 2>job with an added luxury conference called the mind Shift Conference,

0:57:43.440 --> 0:57:45.760
<v Speaker 2>hosted on Little Saint James and to be paid for

0:57:45.880 --> 0:57:50.160
<v Speaker 2>by the Epstein Foundation. And this is meaningful. That's the

0:57:50.160 --> 0:57:52.160
<v Speaker 2>most important thing about his connection to this con man,

0:57:52.200 --> 0:57:55.320
<v Speaker 2>al Secyl, right is that Secyl says, Hey, you need

0:57:55.360 --> 0:57:59.520
<v Speaker 2>to hold a conference on your Sex island about like

0:57:59.600 --> 0:58:02.080
<v Speaker 2>all of the different shifts that are taking place in

0:58:02.120 --> 0:58:07.280
<v Speaker 2>technology and like philosophy and psychology, right, which is going

0:58:07.320 --> 0:58:10.600
<v Speaker 2>to include cryptocurrency, which is why brock Pierce is gonna

0:58:10.640 --> 0:58:14.600
<v Speaker 2>get invited right now. Alsekhel is a con man, and

0:58:14.760 --> 0:58:17.240
<v Speaker 2>I think kind of similar to Collins rector perhaps a

0:58:17.320 --> 0:58:20.160
<v Speaker 2>bit more shameless. So the mind Shift Conference is a

0:58:20.280 --> 0:58:23.600
<v Speaker 2>massive failure if judged by its stated goals. It is

0:58:23.720 --> 0:58:27.760
<v Speaker 2>not go over well. Epstein, like when he starts getting

0:58:27.800 --> 0:58:30.720
<v Speaker 2>involved in this, Epstein views the Mindshift Conference like, this

0:58:30.760 --> 0:58:32.680
<v Speaker 2>is gonna be my TED Talks, Like I'm going to

0:58:32.760 --> 0:58:35.560
<v Speaker 2>create the new TED Talks, right, the new the new

0:58:35.640 --> 0:58:39.000
<v Speaker 2>TED Talks are on my private child molestation island.

0:58:39.280 --> 0:58:43.000
<v Speaker 4>Right, This is where everything you need to know in

0:58:43.040 --> 0:58:46.720
<v Speaker 4>all fucking Domains is gonna happen. Oh god, got It's

0:58:47.120 --> 0:58:48.520
<v Speaker 4>people are so dumb.

0:58:49.560 --> 0:58:53.760
<v Speaker 2>They're so dumb, and they're all the same fucking sad weirdo, right,

0:58:53.880 --> 0:58:55.720
<v Speaker 2>like the idea that like, I need a Ted talk

0:58:55.760 --> 0:58:58.320
<v Speaker 2>on my own that'll make people forget I'm a pedophile.

0:58:59.480 --> 0:59:02.480
<v Speaker 2>So most of the panels at this conference are a bust.

0:59:02.800 --> 0:59:05.480
<v Speaker 2>But one of the invited speakers is Brock Pierce. And again,

0:59:05.480 --> 0:59:08.600
<v Speaker 2>maybe this connection comes because of the Clinton founday, you know,

0:59:08.960 --> 0:59:12.000
<v Speaker 2>because he's Clinton is aware of this guy, and Clinton

0:59:12.040 --> 0:59:15.840
<v Speaker 2>knows Jeffrey, I don't exactly know. But Brock Pierce is

0:59:15.880 --> 0:59:18.120
<v Speaker 2>invited this thing and he gives a talk about crypto,

0:59:18.560 --> 0:59:21.200
<v Speaker 2>and Epstein likes this. He later writes to a colleague

0:59:21.240 --> 0:59:24.280
<v Speaker 2>that he found the young entrepreneur interesting, and Brock is

0:59:24.320 --> 0:59:27.520
<v Speaker 2>kind of the only good thing about this conference.

0:59:27.080 --> 0:59:28.920
<v Speaker 4>As Epstein is Brockett right time.

0:59:30.000 --> 0:59:33.280
<v Speaker 2>Brock is in his twenties at this point, right so

0:59:33.600 --> 0:59:38.760
<v Speaker 2>Epstein increasingly finds Brock's pet cause cryptocurrency intriguing. This is

0:59:38.760 --> 0:59:43.280
<v Speaker 2>what gets Epstein interested in crypto, As Piance writes, previously,

0:59:43.360 --> 0:59:46.680
<v Speaker 2>Jeffrey Epstein had considered bitcoin and its ilk to be

0:59:46.760 --> 0:59:50.320
<v Speaker 2>only useful for criminals. And it's unclear what about Brock's

0:59:50.320 --> 0:59:54.160
<v Speaker 2>presentation changed Epstein's mind, but the fact that Jeffrey was

0:59:54.280 --> 0:59:56.520
<v Speaker 2>himself now a convicted criminal may have played a Well

0:59:56.560 --> 0:59:58.600
<v Speaker 2>maybe it's just that like, this is only for criminals.

0:59:58.640 --> 0:59:59.919
<v Speaker 2>Oh but I'm a criminal.

0:59:59.600 --> 1:00:05.960
<v Speaker 4>Now, yeah, exactly, yeah, right. It's so funny that he

1:00:06.080 --> 1:00:10.960
<v Speaker 4>had the correct no, you're from money lauddering. It's from

1:00:11.000 --> 1:00:12.040
<v Speaker 4>money laddering, dude.

1:00:13.200 --> 1:00:17.520
<v Speaker 2>So Epstein's relationship with al Sekel fell apart after the conference.

1:00:17.600 --> 1:00:19.440
<v Speaker 2>Al tried to sell a bunch of fake art and

1:00:19.480 --> 1:00:23.800
<v Speaker 2>antiquities and got himself blacklisted, but Epstein's broader interest in Brock,

1:00:23.840 --> 1:00:27.520
<v Speaker 2>Pierce and cryptocurrency continue after this point. In June of

1:00:27.520 --> 1:00:31.400
<v Speaker 2>two thousand and seven, Epstein starts emailing with Gavin Andersson,

1:00:31.680 --> 1:00:35.800
<v Speaker 2>the successor to Sushtoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin. And

1:00:35.880 --> 1:00:38.400
<v Speaker 2>we don't actually know who Nakamoto really was. This is

1:00:38.440 --> 1:00:41.440
<v Speaker 2>a big mystery in the world of bitcoin. But he

1:00:41.560 --> 1:00:45.200
<v Speaker 2>picks Anderson to be the lead maintainer of bitcoin development

1:00:45.280 --> 1:00:48.760
<v Speaker 2>after he retires in April of twenty eleven, and we

1:00:48.760 --> 1:00:52.640
<v Speaker 2>don't know why he retired. Some people suggest that it's

1:00:52.680 --> 1:00:55.680
<v Speaker 2>because of what Andresen was talking about doing at this

1:00:55.760 --> 1:00:58.320
<v Speaker 2>point in time, which is Andresen right around the time

1:00:58.360 --> 1:01:01.240
<v Speaker 2>Nakamoto retires, starts talking about how he's going to give

1:01:01.240 --> 1:01:04.560
<v Speaker 2>a talk on bitcoin to the CIA, like at CIA

1:01:04.640 --> 1:01:07.840
<v Speaker 2>headquarters in Langley. And this is, to say the least

1:01:08.160 --> 1:01:13.040
<v Speaker 2>controversial among cryptocurrency advocates, right. The first wave of crypto

1:01:13.160 --> 1:01:17.240
<v Speaker 2>enthusiasts are libertarian and they're very anti state people. This

1:01:17.360 --> 1:01:20.000
<v Speaker 2>is an ideological thing for a lot of them, and

1:01:20.040 --> 1:01:23.760
<v Speaker 2>they don't like the CIA very much. The fact that Andresen,

1:01:24.440 --> 1:01:27.560
<v Speaker 2>basically as soon as he becomes the director of the project,

1:01:27.560 --> 1:01:29.360
<v Speaker 2>after Nakamoto is like I'm going to go talk to

1:01:29.400 --> 1:01:31.760
<v Speaker 2>the CIA about it is kind of giving up the

1:01:31.840 --> 1:01:35.520
<v Speaker 2>game for the real money people in crypto, right, which

1:01:35.560 --> 1:01:39.600
<v Speaker 2>is this isn't about escaping the state. You're not freeing

1:01:39.640 --> 1:01:44.680
<v Speaker 2>yourselves from the shackles of the government. You're co opting it. Right,

1:01:45.160 --> 1:01:47.960
<v Speaker 2>Crypto is as we've seen from the president. Right, We're like, no,

1:01:48.880 --> 1:01:52.640
<v Speaker 2>he's the fucking Bitcoin didn't free people from the clutches

1:01:52.640 --> 1:01:54.920
<v Speaker 2>of the government and the Federal Reserve. It gave the

1:01:54.920 --> 1:01:58.400
<v Speaker 2>president a way to take bribes. Yeah, right, Like that's

1:01:58.440 --> 1:02:00.240
<v Speaker 2>how crypto.

1:02:00.040 --> 1:02:04.640
<v Speaker 4>All those fucking horrible functions, So any rich fool can

1:02:04.720 --> 1:02:04.960
<v Speaker 4>do it.

1:02:05.640 --> 1:02:10.120
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but this is really controversial at the time, right.

1:02:10.360 --> 1:02:14.040
<v Speaker 2>So Epstein emails Andrewson two days before he talks to

1:02:14.040 --> 1:02:17.240
<v Speaker 2>the CIA, and he seems to have started phishing around.

1:02:17.320 --> 1:02:20.320
<v Speaker 2>He's asking his contacts for Gavin's phone number? Does anyone

1:02:20.360 --> 1:02:22.760
<v Speaker 2>know this guy? Does anyone have his number? A few

1:02:22.760 --> 1:02:25.840
<v Speaker 2>weeks earlier, he starts by asking Bay Area socialite and

1:02:25.840 --> 1:02:29.240
<v Speaker 2>professional hanger on Jason Calacanis, who is also close to

1:02:29.240 --> 1:02:32.280
<v Speaker 2>Elon Musk, and eventually he gets the info and the

1:02:32.320 --> 1:02:34.680
<v Speaker 2>two soon to have gotten in touch. On the twelfth,

1:02:35.320 --> 1:02:37.840
<v Speaker 2>he's like emailing and he asks Rock directly for his

1:02:37.920 --> 1:02:40.360
<v Speaker 2>phone number. We don't know what the two. If the

1:02:40.400 --> 1:02:42.280
<v Speaker 2>two talked on the phone, we don't know what they

1:02:42.280 --> 1:02:45.479
<v Speaker 2>would have talked about. But on the fourteenth, two days

1:02:45.520 --> 1:02:48.920
<v Speaker 2>after he connects directly with Epstein, Andrewson speaks to the

1:02:48.960 --> 1:02:53.240
<v Speaker 2>CIA at Langley. The next day, Epstein emails Anderson about

1:02:53.320 --> 1:02:55.800
<v Speaker 2>meeting in person, and we don't know if they did,

1:02:55.840 --> 1:02:59.280
<v Speaker 2>but we know that he declines several invitations to do so. Right,

1:02:59.800 --> 1:03:02.880
<v Speaker 2>we don't know to what extent these people. We don't

1:03:02.880 --> 1:03:04.160
<v Speaker 2>know if they talked on the phone. We know they're

1:03:04.160 --> 1:03:06.080
<v Speaker 2>emailing a bunch, we know Epstein's trying to get in

1:03:06.120 --> 1:03:08.080
<v Speaker 2>touch with them. We know Epstein talks about meeting him

1:03:08.080 --> 1:03:10.960
<v Speaker 2>in person. We don't know what actually happens, and we'll

1:03:10.960 --> 1:03:14.439
<v Speaker 2>talk about there's some other times when Epstein will mention

1:03:14.560 --> 1:03:18.160
<v Speaker 2>andresen that make me think he and Gavin had more

1:03:18.160 --> 1:03:21.160
<v Speaker 2>of a relationship than Gavin wants to admit or that

1:03:21.360 --> 1:03:23.360
<v Speaker 2>is publicly known. Right, And one of the issues here

1:03:23.440 --> 1:03:26.840
<v Speaker 2>is that we just have what these people emailed about.

1:03:26.920 --> 1:03:29.520
<v Speaker 2>And in fact, if you search through variations of like

1:03:30.080 --> 1:03:34.000
<v Speaker 2>not for email or like you know, for phone only

1:03:34.120 --> 1:03:36.439
<v Speaker 2>or stuff like that in the Epstein files, you'll find

1:03:36.480 --> 1:03:39.160
<v Speaker 2>them Epstein periodically being like, hey, we got to take

1:03:39.200 --> 1:03:41.840
<v Speaker 2>this offline, Like this isn't in person conversation, this is

1:03:41.840 --> 1:03:43.760
<v Speaker 2>something we got to talk about on the phone. So

1:03:44.360 --> 1:03:47.240
<v Speaker 2>the fact that we can't prove via the emails that

1:03:47.480 --> 1:03:50.840
<v Speaker 2>Epstein and Gavin were connecting or what they were talking about,

1:03:51.280 --> 1:03:54.080
<v Speaker 2>doesn't mean they weren't right because a lot of this

1:03:54.160 --> 1:03:56.880
<v Speaker 2>stuff is just kind of off the record. But we

1:03:56.960 --> 1:04:00.160
<v Speaker 2>know that Epstein was working hard to be in contact

1:04:00.200 --> 1:04:01.960
<v Speaker 2>with them, and that they had the potential to be

1:04:02.080 --> 1:04:05.680
<v Speaker 2>in contact and that Epstein talks about Gavin as if

1:04:05.680 --> 1:04:08.760
<v Speaker 2>they were in contact at other points, right, So that's

1:04:08.800 --> 1:04:11.680
<v Speaker 2>what I can say, whatever the two discussed, if they

1:04:11.720 --> 1:04:15.520
<v Speaker 2>discussed anything. Epstein plunges ahead into the world of cryptocurrency.

1:04:15.560 --> 1:04:18.760
<v Speaker 2>After this point, he continues talking with Brock Pierce as well.

1:04:19.120 --> 1:04:21.840
<v Speaker 2>The two met repeatedly in person in two thousand and one,

1:04:22.080 --> 1:04:26.120
<v Speaker 2>and Epstein offers Pierce financial advice. Brock eventually comes to

1:04:26.200 --> 1:04:28.360
<v Speaker 2>him and admits that he hasn't paid his taxes in years,

1:04:28.400 --> 1:04:31.520
<v Speaker 2>and Epstein helps him sort that out. Their friendship continues

1:04:31.560 --> 1:04:34.080
<v Speaker 2>into the spring of twenty twelve, which is the first

1:04:34.080 --> 1:04:36.640
<v Speaker 2>time that we have a record of Epstein providing girls

1:04:36.680 --> 1:04:40.200
<v Speaker 2>to Brock Pierce, and you can see the email Shane

1:04:40.280 --> 1:04:44.160
<v Speaker 2>up on the website. It starts with Jeffrey Epstein saying

1:04:44.880 --> 1:04:47.360
<v Speaker 2>victim name and victim name are alone in LA. I

1:04:47.440 --> 1:04:51.360
<v Speaker 2>had to leave. Please assist leave your girlfriend home, and

1:04:51.400 --> 1:04:56.240
<v Speaker 2>then a large redacted section of the email, and Brock responds,

1:04:56.400 --> 1:04:58.960
<v Speaker 2>will do broke up with the girlfriend last night, so

1:04:59.040 --> 1:05:03.080
<v Speaker 2>that won't be a problem, best regards Brock, to which

1:05:03.120 --> 1:05:07.800
<v Speaker 2>Epstein responds, call me a little later, and then Brock

1:05:08.000 --> 1:05:10.040
<v Speaker 2>replies the next day, I had a great time with

1:05:10.160 --> 1:05:14.480
<v Speaker 2>the girls. Hope they had fun too. So we know

1:05:14.560 --> 1:05:17.440
<v Speaker 2>at this point, and you know, I might say, if

1:05:17.440 --> 1:05:20.280
<v Speaker 2>this was any other group of people, while girls sometimes

1:05:20.320 --> 1:05:24.560
<v Speaker 2>people refer to adult women that way, I'm not going

1:05:24.600 --> 1:05:28.160
<v Speaker 2>to assume that here. I'm not going to assume these

1:05:28.200 --> 1:05:32.840
<v Speaker 2>are not literal girls. Because it's Jeffrey Epstein, you know,

1:05:34.680 --> 1:05:38.320
<v Speaker 2>youw and Epstein's relationship with Brock and his interest in

1:05:38.360 --> 1:05:41.160
<v Speaker 2>bitcoin are only going to expand from this point on,

1:05:41.720 --> 1:05:43.480
<v Speaker 2>and both are going to bring him to the orbit

1:05:43.520 --> 1:05:46.720
<v Speaker 2>of several major figures on the New Right, including Steve Bannon,

1:05:46.920 --> 1:05:49.360
<v Speaker 2>and we'll talk about all that and much more in

1:05:49.440 --> 1:05:52.160
<v Speaker 2>part two. I know there wasn't as much Epstein as

1:05:52.160 --> 1:05:53.800
<v Speaker 2>you may have expected. I mean, we got a bit,

1:05:54.200 --> 1:05:56.720
<v Speaker 2>a good bit at the beginning. In the end, there's

1:05:56.720 --> 1:05:59.160
<v Speaker 2>a lot you have to hear about Brock Pierce first

1:05:59.200 --> 1:06:01.000
<v Speaker 2>to understand why all this matters.

1:06:01.400 --> 1:06:04.600
<v Speaker 4>The reason people tune in is for backstory. You know,

1:06:04.880 --> 1:06:07.640
<v Speaker 4>you find the ship that I'm like, yeah, that's the pod.

1:06:07.800 --> 1:06:12.480
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and Somehowell did in fact come up, which was incredible.

1:06:12.880 --> 1:06:14.040
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, good for her.

1:06:14.160 --> 1:06:17.520
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah, well you got any pluggables to plug?

1:06:18.480 --> 1:06:21.280
<v Speaker 4>Oh? I don't know, making a show called Starter Trek

1:06:21.400 --> 1:06:26.040
<v Speaker 4>on our premium sit suboptimal podcast. I saw you were

1:06:26.080 --> 1:06:31.200
<v Speaker 4>watching a little bit of Starfleet Academy Robert Couple. Yeah, yeah,

1:06:31.240 --> 1:06:33.760
<v Speaker 4>but my my cost Tony Newsom's a writer on.

1:06:33.720 --> 1:06:36.520
<v Speaker 2>That and Ship right right right, Yeah, I love Tonni Yeah.

1:06:36.320 --> 1:06:41.640
<v Speaker 4>Beckett Peckett Mariner on lower Decks, so yeah, she's We're

1:06:41.680 --> 1:06:45.760
<v Speaker 4>watching Star Trek episodes and I have seen a bunch,

1:06:45.840 --> 1:06:47.480
<v Speaker 4>but I don't know nearly as much as hers, so

1:06:47.600 --> 1:06:48.720
<v Speaker 4>I'm I'm no.

1:06:50.720 --> 1:06:53.480
<v Speaker 2>There's very few people involved in making Star Trek that

1:06:53.520 --> 1:06:56.760
<v Speaker 2>I feel like, really no Star Trek, and Toni is

1:06:57.000 --> 1:06:57.440
<v Speaker 2>one of them.

1:06:58.480 --> 1:07:00.600
<v Speaker 3>Tony really no Star Trek. Wild.

1:07:02.720 --> 1:07:04.520
<v Speaker 2>I've got a thing to plug before we go out here.

1:07:05.000 --> 1:07:06.800
<v Speaker 2>I met with just somebody last night when I was

1:07:06.800 --> 1:07:09.800
<v Speaker 2>out at a bar who told me about a local

1:07:10.040 --> 1:07:14.600
<v Speaker 2>Portland charity called the Artist Mentorship Program aka AMP, which

1:07:14.640 --> 1:07:18.080
<v Speaker 2>supports youth experiencing homelessness and has done so for over

1:07:18.120 --> 1:07:20.600
<v Speaker 2>thirty years. It serves young people aged fifteen to twenty

1:07:20.600 --> 1:07:24.000
<v Speaker 2>five and provides essential supplies and job training, with music

1:07:24.040 --> 1:07:27.200
<v Speaker 2>and art programs at the heart of its work. If

1:07:27.240 --> 1:07:29.680
<v Speaker 2>you'd like to support or learn more about AMP, you

1:07:29.720 --> 1:07:35.480
<v Speaker 2>can go to amppdx dot org. That's amppdx dot org.

1:07:36.280 --> 1:07:39.320
<v Speaker 2>It's good cause check them out.

1:07:42.240 --> 1:07:44.920
<v Speaker 1>Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1:07:44.960 --> 1:07:47.640
<v Speaker 1>For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

1:07:47.680 --> 1:07:50.880
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1:07:50.920 --> 1:07:54.800
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1:07:57.600 --> 1:08:00.880
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1:08:04.480 --> 1:08:07.680
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1:08:07.720 --> 1:08:11.680
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1:08:11.720 --> 1:08:13.160
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